


A Galaxy Lost

by AidansQueen



Series: The Valiant Series [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angry Time Lords, Competitive Time Lords, Corsets and Pink Nail Polish, F/F, F/M, Gallifrey, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Lots of sarcasm, Missy has a ringtone, Psychic Aquatic Spiders, Rose Tyler is Bad Wolf, Rose Tyler is annoyed., Rude Time lords, The Doctor is the Doctor., The Master is back with even more rude comments., The Valeyard wears a Fez, lots of running
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-10-25 23:24:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 57,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidansQueen/pseuds/AidansQueen
Summary: When the navigation panel burns out, Rose and the Master are lost in the Universe with no way to get home.





	1. The Holiday Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

The artificial sunlight is warm on her skin, the TARDIS echoes noise similar to a day by the pool. Sea gulls, the lull of the sea, there’s even sand under her beach chair. Rose is sprawled across it, tanning beneath the false light. This was one of the perks of a TARDIS—you could have an Olympic size pool. It feels like she’s at a seaside resort, the soft warm breeze smooth across her skin.

They’ve been stuck in the vortex for a week, and after two days of trying to repair the navigation panel and a shouting match that resulted in her being locked out of the console room—Rose decided to spend the rest of that time by the pool.

“Rose Tyler,” his voice echoes across the room and Rose groans, rolling over onto her stomach.

“No,” she mumbles against the cloth of her towel, “go away.” She hears him drop down into the chair beside hers, and cracks one eye open to look at him, “are you going to yell at me again?”

“You melted a chunk of the console off,” the Master says slowly, closing his eyes against the artificial sunlight above them. “I was cross—you _have_ to be more responsible than that.”

“I thought I could do it,” Rose says softly, “I couldn’t reach that wire with my gloves on, so I took one off. I’ve been working on it…I can hold it back longer now.”

“You still melted a bit of the console—the TARDIS was very cross with you,” he tells her.

“I know,” Rose sighs, “but she forgave me…I didn’t mean to do it.”

“We can land,” he says after a pause, “I just have no idea _where_ we’ll land. The TARDIS safety procedures prevent us from landing anywhere dangerous like a sun or a star. However, I’ve no control _where_ we land…we could land anywhere in time and space…” he rubs his eyes wearily, “and I’ve no spare parts to fix the console…we’re just going to have to hope we land somewhere with a shop.”

“Well,” Rose sighs, “I wanted a holiday…I got one.”

“This isn’t what I had in mind,” the Master says flatly.

“You’ll fix it,” she says, patting his shoulder as she sits up, “We need to hope we land somewhere with food…all we have is tea, a bunch of strawberry biscuits you hoarded in the kitchen like a flipping _squirrel_ and a half a gallon of milk….the TARDIS can reproduce them but they never taste the same and she can’t reproduce anything that’s not already in the kitchen…” Rose pulls a face, “I don’t fancy eating strawberry biscuits for the next few weeks.”

“ _Weeks_?” he sputters, “can you see where were headed?”

“No,” she smiles faintly, “I’m just guessing.”

 

                                 

* * *

 

 

When they land, both hold their breaths in apprehension. Neither know what’s beyond the TARDIS doors, be it space or city or a different time zone. The Master pulls the monitor around, fiddling with the controls as he searches for some indication of what they’d find outside.

“Oh, piss on it,” he waves it off and steps around the console, heading for the doors, “Let’s just open the door.” Rose steps up behind him, peering over his shoulder tentatively as he eases the door open and looks outside.

“What do you see?” Rose asks curiously.

“ _Sand_ ,” he makes a face, “I don’t like sand.”

He steps aside to let her look and what she sees makes her grin from ear to ear, “it’s a _beach_!”

“Your observant,” he snorts, “sand will ruin the paint.”

“It’ll be fine,” Rose tells him, “I smell sea water—and I hear birds…oh it’s a _leisure planet_!”

“We’re not staying--...” he doesn’t get to finish the sentence before she’s shoved past him, darting out onto the beach.

“We’ve been cramped up in the TARDIS for a _week_!” Rose calls to him, “Just relax a bit, will you?”

“It’s not a _leisure planet_!” he calls after her and then scoffs when she kicks off her shoes to play in the water, “ _humans_.” He watches her for a few minutes, his gaze on the sea and the funny way that it moves. He frowns, a memory tickling the back of his mind, “Rose, I think that water is _carnivorous_!”

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

Leave it to the Master to take her to a planet with carnivorous water and a living beach. Everything on this planet was either carnivorous or very rude. They have to fly the TARDIS to look for a town, Rose hanging her head out the open door as they soar over land and sea, Rose having to signal him whenever she spots something.

“Down there!” Rose calls to him, “there’s a village!”

They land outside the little village, and judging by its occupants the Master surmises they’ve landed somewhere in the Trosa galaxy.

At the other end of the universe.

Lovely.

“Well at least they’ve got food,” Rose remarks as they stroll side by side through the market at the heart of the village. It’s busy and hot, the buildings are green sandstone with odd looking veins of purple running through it. People crowd around them, pushing past and around them as they go.

“Is food all you ever think about?” he scowls in reply, “we need _parts_.”

“The Doctor would improvise,” Rose remarks and immediately regrets her comment, “sorry.”

“I’m aware,” he replies flatly, “I found a bicycle pump attached to the particle reversal system in his TARDIS. It’s clever and useful but hardly sustainable for extended periods of time.”

“You’re the bloke who made a ship fly using _food_ ,” Rose tells him encouragingly, “I _know_ you can fix this.”

“Even if I sort it out, and that’s even if I manage to find the right parts, and _that’s_ even if I manage to find the right parts that the TARDIS won’t just immediately reject….” He trails off thoughtfully for a moment, “it’ll definitely be a task. The whole navigation panel’s gone.”

“Then we keep going till we land somewhere with the parts you need,” Rose tells him, stopping at a vendor to pay for some fruit that looked a great deal like oranges. “We’ll make it work.”

 

                                                                         

* * *

 

 

“Now I remember,” the Master begins idly. He’d been staring at the sea for a while, rolling one of those funny looking oranges between his palms thoughtfully. “See the way it moves? Living water, a watery rainforest. It’s fluid but solid, the molecules are too thick for it to be water.”

“So we can breathe in it?” Rose quirks a brow, scrunching up her face as he idly tosses the orange at her, narrowly missing her face but squarely hitting her in the shoulder instead.

“Nope,” he pops the _p_ in peculiar way, and she recalls for a moment that the Doctor often did that. “It’s too thick but there are lifeforms living within it that can. Mostly tricethlapods…there like squid except hairy and carnivorous. Of course, the hair isn’t really hair but tiny legs designed to help them move about in the forest.”

“Your babbling,” Rose comments quietly, blocks another orange from hitting her in the face, “Oi! Stop that!”

“Make me,” he says without looking at her, “I’m bored and you should be able to stop them yourself.”

“Whatever magical powers you think I have, believe me I don’t,” Rose tells him flatly and chucks one of the oranges back at him, smirking when it breaks and sticky ooze slides down his arm.

“You’ve done it before, you told me so yourself. The sooner you get a handle on Bad Wolf, the better. I’m rather tired of listening to the TARDIS complain that you’ve melted another bit of wall every time you use the bath.” His gaze turns to the beach they sit on, currently the only bit of beach anywhere that isn’t trying to eat them for some odd reason. The sand doesn’t breathe here like it did where they’d landed earlier, there is no subtle shift of fluidity or hum of life in the tiny grains beneath them. He feels eyes on them though, he knows somewhere they are being watched.

“Time insulation,” Rose mutters quietly, “you said the TARDIS is safe.”

“It _is_ ,” he scowls at her, “but I didn’t expect….”

“You didn’t expect me to be _bathing_?” Rose stares at him incredulously, “seriously…do you lot not use the bath? I’ve seen you do it obviously but I thought you might have been doing it to irritate me.”

“I don’t pay much mind to the grooming habits of your primitive species,” he rolls his eyes in exasperation, “you lot smell so terrible I’m beginning to wonder if you even bath at all.”

“You,” Rose blurts out in understanding, “It was you telling the TARDIS to put all that extra soap in my bathroom.”

“Maybe,” he says quietly, his eyes on the sand, “Thought I’d drop a hint.”

Rose glares.

“I can’t help it if _my_ sense of smell is twice as strong as yours,” he frowns at her, finally meeting her gaze, “I am what I am Rose Tyler, I can’t help that and if we’re going to be stuck together you and I are going to have to make a few compromises. I don’t particularly like humans you know…let alone having to _live_ with one.” After a long while he’s at it again, boredom and a certain determination to annoy her for his own amusement winning over.

“Stop that,” Rose tells him firmly, “seriously stop now.”

“ _Make me_ ,” he reiterates pointedly, hurtling another piece of fruit at her. The bits of orange staining his sleeve have turned red oddly enough—a peculiar reaction but perhaps due to the white linen of his shirt which is most likely a foreign substance on this planet. He clearly doesn’t mind it, his focus solely on Rose for the moment.

“I said _stop it_!” Rose snarls, flinging the hurtling piece of fruit away from her with a sharp flick of her hand. Time seems suspended for a brief moment, and then without further ceremony rather than landing neatly in his hand—much to the Master’s dismay—the orange smacks him clean in the face.

They sit silently for a moment, Rose desperately trying to suppress a bought of giggles threatening to burst from tightly clenched lips. He is the picture of irritation and annoyance, orange bits sliding down his face and dribbling down onto his shirt. “Clearly,” he begins stiffly, wiping goo from his chin, “your emotions heighten your abilities much like any form of extrasensory ability. You’re going to need to reign them in.”

Then he stands, dusting sand off his trousers and rolling the cuffs of his shirt sleeves neatly. Rose watches him, his movements are methodical and precise, he and the Doctor are such polar opposites in that respect. The Master prefers organization and precision while the Doctor is all chaos and disorganization.

He turns on heel, waving as he goes, “Come along Rose Tyler, we ought to get back.”

Rose watches him go for a beat and then gathers what’s left of the fruit and hurries after him. She doesn’t particularly like being bossed around and he’s probably the biggest control freak she’s ever met. She briefly contemplates chucking a piece of fruit at his head but decides against it, they’d need something other than strawberry biscuits to eat and if she used up all the fruit they’d have to walk all the way back to the village to get more. Or rather, _she’d_ be walking back alone because now that he’d scavenged the place for parts he couldn’t be bothered to walk back with her.

Lazy bugger.

As they go, Rose finds herself watching his back. She isn’t necessarily observing him per say, but perhaps his personality. He walks so stiffly, so formally whereas the Doctor walks with a gliding ease and confident sense of grounding. The Master if Rose wasn’t mistaken, was a little insecure regardless of how he hides it. Rose could see it in the way he walks, like someone putting on a show of confident determination when he’s got no clue. Rose is so caught up in her musings it takes her a moment to notice the odd bulbous thing sliding across the beach towards his leg. Then she stops, nearly dropping the fruit in her arms.

“ _Stop_!” Rose shouts in warning, the sharp intonation of her voice setting off every alarm the Master had.

 

He freezes, turns slowly and before he can react the creatures caught him around the leg and was dragging him down the beach towards the water. Rose darts forward, grabbing him around the shoulders to keep him from being pulled into the jello like substance that on this planet was considered an ocean. “Oh no you don’t!” Rose shouts, fumbling in the Master’s pockets for his screwdriver.

“Left!” The Master snaps, “Left pocket, red button, fourth one down! _Hurry up_!” He snarls at her like this was her fault and she was clearly a bit slow. Rose yanks the screwdriver out, presses the button and inhales sharply at the horrendous angry roar bubbling up from the frothy cerulean jello forest before them.

“ _Wrong button_!” The Master shouts, grappling with the slimy tentacles trying to tether him up further.

“I pressed the button you told me too!” Rose shouts back, desperately trying every button this time but finding none that offered any help so far. “Why is it you and the Doctor both have to have screwdrivers and both of you have a million buttons on them that do everything but actually behave as a screwdriver and then to make things worse you make them all red!” Rose snaps angrily at him, finds herself a bit pleased when she finally hits a button that sets off a sharp jet of burning light, causing at least one of the tentacles to retreat for a moment.

“They’re not all _red_!” her snaps back angrily, “they’re varying shades of red according to what they accomplish. Red is a _mechanical_ color and I can’t help it if you can’t see the varying shades with your frankly ridiculous and primitive eye sight!”

“ _Laser’s_ should be _red_!” Rose shouts at him, “Big massive buttons of doom, _should be red_! Not _every_ single button!” Rose snaps at him and presses that same button once more, sending off another jet of burning light at the creature. “Oi you! Let him go! He probably won’t even taste very good anyways!”

“ _Excuse me_?” The Master splutters indignantly but his comment goes unnoticed as Rose was particularly keen to drive the creature off him at the moment.

Then without ceremony, everything just got a whole lot worse.

 

                                                           

* * *

 

 

 

Hours later they sit in the console room of the TARDIS smelling of sour milk with bits of blue goo stuck to their clothes. Both breath heavily, are exhausted and the TARDIS is particularly unhappy with them dripping bits of muck on the grating.

“You could have just frozen her,” the Master scowls at Rose from across the console, “It would have saved us a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t know _how_!” Rose snaps back at him—how were they ever going to manage this whole living arrangement thing? They couldn’t even stand in the same room together for five minutes without bickering about something. “I can’t just do it at will….it just _happens_.”

“Would have been nice if it’d _happened_ a bit sooner,” the Master grumbles irritably and tosses another bit of burned up paneling aside.  He refers to the incident from earlier, which the Master is still kicking himself about for being so daft in the first place. He’d thought it odd that the beach was peculiarly silent, but when that creature tried to drag him in and the beach suddenly began to move and slide beneath them, he knew both of them wouldn’t be returning to the TARDIS anytime soon. After being swallowed up by a giant jello forest like substance, he was nearly married off to a mershian empress who thought he was her long-lost husband.

Which put Rose in an awkward position.

Rose who’d never swung a sword in her life had to stand in the middle of an arena and fight the empress for the right to claim the Master as her own. Well, according to their traditions, it was how a dispute over mate rights was settled.

“Mermaids,” Rose says suddenly, “I’ve never seen them before today.... blimey…but actual _mermaids_!” Rose grins a little to herself, stares at her hands and then frowns at the drying blue goo on her skin. “I’m going for a shower then…I can’t stand the smell anymore.”

“ _Finally_ ,” the Master says dramatically, his voice echoing from under the console, “I thought I was going to have to remind you.”

“Oi,” Rose tells him firmly, “I fought for you today, you owe me. Otherwise you’d be stuck married to a mermaid empress.”

“They _aren’t_ mermaids,” the Master rolls his eyes, “though I imagine that’s where the myth came from, or bits of it at least….and I was _fine_ … I could have gotten out on my own, I was working on a plan.”

“You were being sized up for ceremonial robes…” Rose stares at him incredulously.

“I was a bit in trouble,” he admits after a beat, “but mind you… _that sword_.”

“I hadn’t a flippin clue what to do!” Rose laughs, “I just got lucky I guess.”

“Lucky for me,” the Master muses, “ _mate_.”

Rose smirks, “Honey are you going to make me dinner now?”

“ _Funny_ ,” the Master snorts, “though if you don’t mind I’d prefer to cook…you and your Mother...” he shudders mockingly, “neither of you can cook.”

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

They live together the same way they talk—by bickering. The next chance they take trying to get home lands them stuck in the vortex. So somewhere between trying to repair the console and deciding who’s doing the dishes and whose turn it is to scrub out the pool filter, annoyance begins to set in.

Or something like it.

It starts with little things, Rose puts the spoons away in the wrong drawer and it offsets the whole order of everything in the kitchen. So in quiet retaliation she finds her room in every vibrant shade of pink that has ever existed. Rose hides his screwdriver and he steals hers, Rose reprograms the console room display to a previous setting from years ago—why did the Doctor have a setting that involved white cotton linen and lace?

The mischief got worse.

 the Master cuts the power to her room and she’s plunged into pitch black darkness—while in the shower—much to Roses dismay. That meant no hot water, no artificial atmosphere enhancers, no TV….

So she locked him out of his.

And hid all his clothes.

And left nothing but repetitive suits that belonged to the Doctor.

So he went naked.

“Oh come _on_!” Rose slams to a halt and whirls around, turning her gaze to the wall beside her. “You could at least wear _pants_ ,” Rose growls irritably.

“I don’t wear them,” he smirks at her as he bends to retrieve a wrench off the grating floor. Rose darts out of the console room so fast she’s left with the Master’s fading laughter echoing down the hall as she goes.

Needless to say, his suits reappeared the next day.

They eventually come to a truce in the form of strawberry biscuits and a powerful cup of tea—which may or may not have been mixed with a hint of liquor Rose found hidden in a wall cupboard in the console room.

“We’re going mad being trapped in this TARDIS,” Rose points out, sipping her tea, “seriously…we need to land.”

“I’ve told you,” the Master says with his gaze hovering just over the cup in his hands, the rim to his mouth, “there’s no telling where we’ll land…it’s risky. I’d rather just fix the TARDIS while in the safety of the vortex and then try to land.”

“And how long do you suppose that tennis ball is going to hold off as a valve cut off for the temporal relief switch?” Rose asks conversationally though the Master can tell straight away that she’s trying to a make a point.

He sighs heavily, stares at the table and leans back in the seat, “tell me…how do you suppose we find parts?”

“ _Landing_ ,” Rose says pointedly, “and exploring.”

“Oh you _know_ how I hate meddling,” the Master tells her with a little mocking grin at the edge of his mouth.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

They land in a corridor, somewhere outside. It’s bright out, creatures that sounded suspiciously like birds sing from lush trees of every color and size. Rose had never seen such a paradise, rolling hills of lush green grass and towering granite buildings with clean polished windows, mosaic art patterned neatly across the tiled walkway as they weave their way through the garden towards the front desk.

“Leisure planet,” he murmurs near her ear as they walk, “told you I’d find you one.”

“Smug,” Rose murmurs back as they walk.

“A little,” he replies smartly and then slides his hand along her lower back, smiling brightly at the receptionist, “Hi! My lady friend and I seem to be a bit lost…I can’t find my room key—too much to drink you know—…” he winks at the receptionist who blushes brightly, “and I was wondering if perhaps you could give me another?” he leans forward, crossing his arms over the counter as he leans in to meet her gaze, the smile still plastered to his face, “I _really_ would appreciate it.”

“Of course sir,” she smiles brightly, handing over a silvery looking computer chip Rose figured was probably the room key. There was a funny glazed look in her eyes, and she knew in that moment the Master did something to her to get that key.

“Oi!” Rose hisses as they walk away and up towards the lift, “what did you do to her?”

“Nothing permanent,” the Master tells her casually, waving his screwdriver over the silver computer chip before handing it to her, “there you go—all access pass to anything and everything you want here. This place is the prime of technology…innovation Rose…the first time your silly little species ever came up with anything _remotely_ interesting besides that one TV show with those funny looking creatures with the TV’s in their bellies but that’s beside the point—the point _is_ , this is a leisure planet but not just any leisure planet…here you can do anything you like with a simple choice. Rocking climbing…go home…stay here…travel the universe…revisit every memory you’ve ever had…all you have to do is _choose_.”

“I don’t follow…” Rose replies as they head towards their room, an enormous suite with all the luxuries.

“Anything,” he tells her as he picks up a tiny silver ear piece and holds it out to her, “put this in your ear…it’ll take you literally anywhere you want---artificially of course. It’s virtual reality but _better_.”

Rose tentatively places it in her ear as he does, and looks around expectantly, “now what?”

“Think of something,” he tells her, “anything…what have you always wanted to do?”

“Um…” Rose trails off.

“Oh you lot, so unimaginative— _fine_ ,” he pauses a moment and then the scenery changes, the room flickers to darkness and then suddenly….

They were standing in wide, dusty stone cavernous hallways. Rose could smell the dirt, feel the cool breeze on her skin, hear the sound of people chattering farther down. The Master stands beside her, his eyes on something.

“That’s me,” he tells her, nodding towards a man in black velvet, “Welcome to Logopolis.”

“You took me to one of your conquests?” Rose quirks a brow at him curiously.

The Master shrugs, “It was one of my better plans…”

“You _destroyed_ Logopolis,” Rose tells him skeptically.

“It had its flaws,” he sniffs indignantly and starts forward, following his prior incarnation around the corner and into another room, “ah yes…I remember this…”

“What is all this?” Rose asks, startling as the people in the room pass through her like a mirage, completely oblivious to her presence.

“These people were brilliant, their calculations using these machines could have given me the base code _for the universe itself_ …imagine it Rose Tyler, having the building blocks of the universe at your disposal…you could do anything you want.”

“Bad Wolf,” Rose comments idly, watching the Master’s prior               incarnation curiously, “I’m pretty sure I’ve beat you to it…. mind you— _black velvet_?” Rose grins at him.

“Admit it,” he tells her as he circles his other self, “I look positively _debonair_.”

“Minus the beard,” Rose tells him agreeably, “and the silver embroidery.”

“I like my beard,” he says indignantly, “there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Except that it’s on your face,” Rose muses aloud with a playful grin.

“You don’t know what’s tasteful,” he tells her with an indignant sniff, “or you’d like it.”

“Beards are all the rage on Gallifrey then I take it?” Rose grins and then falters, realizing what she said.

“Only the most dignified of nobility have them,” he tells her and sighs, popping out the ear piece. The world around them fades and their back in the hotel room again. “Alright, out of my head. Go play somewhere so I can bring the TARDIS in here and get to work on the console.”

“This whole thing is a rouse to keep me out of the way isn’t it?” Rose asks him accusingly.

“Yes,” he admits wholeheartedly, “and it’s working—admit it.”

“Yes,” Rose tells him stiffly, wrinkling her nose as she turns away from him and tosses her bags down on the big bed in the other room, “I call dibs on the bed!”

“Fair enough,” he replies, clearly not paying any attention to her, “I need very little sleep and it means you’ll keep out of the TARDIS entirely while I’m working.”

 

                                                     

* * *

 

 

She’s locked out of the TARDIS the minute they’ve finished moving it into the suite. Rose takes this as her cue to go find something else to do. Which she does, finding amusement in wandering the gardens and pavilions scattered across the landscape. She lays out by the pool, gets a massage, spends a few hours in every store in the pavilion, tries the buffet and watches a movie.

 _This is lonely_.

When she did things like this, the Doctor was usually with her. She’d giggle while he told her stories over dinner, make funny faces at things that tasted weird or marveled over anything syrupy. She missed the sound of his voice, the brown suit, the epic hair…

“Rose?” His voice sounded so real in that moment she froze mid step…she was hearing things surely?

“Doctor?” Rose breathes his name like a woman starved and turns to face him, tears burning her eyes at the sight of his smiling face. He tucks his hands in his trouser pockets just so, cocking his head to one side as he regards her, “Shall we?”

_The ear piece…this isn’t real._

“What?” Rose asks him, stepping close, her fingers trailing along his face and his jaw, along his shoulders…she could feel the material of his suit, hear his voice, the coolness of his skin—timelords have a much lower body temperature then humans do—and he was right in front of her, real and whole and smiling at her. “Doctor…”

“Rose,” he frowns, “what’s wrong? I was thinking we could try that anti-gravity pool…can you imagine? Big bubbles of water floating over a tropical garden? Mind you...that diving board.” He beams down at her, “How bout it?”

“What?” Rose covers his mouth with her hand, “Seriously…stop talking.”

He frowns down at her, “Rose I…” he stops talking—mostly because Rose is kissing him.

“I love you…” Rose says slowly, meeting his gaze, “I’ve loved you from the moment I met you…I loved your big ears, your goofy smile…the way you said _fantastic_ …I love this version of you…I’d love you with any face you had…I just love _you_. I’m sorry…I’m sorry I got you eaten that one time…and I’m sorry I was such a jealous bint at times…and I made things awkward…and I was so difficult with you because I didn’t want to leave you because you were my _whole_ world…I wanted to spend my whole life with you but I’m older now…and I get it. I wanted to say thank you…for stopping me. For making me go with my Mum because if I hadn’t I’d have spent the rest of my life _wondering_ about her… _missing her_. I want you to know you’re not the last time lord, they’re all still alive and safe and…well the Master’s here with me and he’s a right wanker but I can manage him...blimey I miss you…” Rose murmurs and kisses him again much to his protest and vibrant confusion. His arms flail awkwardly because he clearly doesn’t know what to do with them, finally settling on her shoulders as he cautiously pries her off him.

“Rose…” he begins slowly, “I’m _real_.”

“No you’re not,” Rose smiles wistfully, tears glistening in her eyes, “Your in another universe and I’m here…this isn’t real…were on a leisure planet inside this weird virtual reality bubble thing.”

“ _No_ ,” he tells her slowly, pointedly, “I’m _very_ real…and you just told me some very real things that you ought not to have because I don’t think you and I are quite on the same track timeline wise.”

“Oh, _shut up_ ,” Rose blurts out and yanks him to her by the lapels of his coat, kissing him roughly. “Let’s go swimming.”

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

Why does she feel guilty?

It’s bizarre.

She has nothing to feel guilty about, it isn’t like the Master would care—if anything he’d tease her about it. It was her one chance to say goodbye to him properly, a gift she’ll always cherish. It was still awkward in a way, when she looked at him though. Bouncing between great hovering pools of water, some were vertical and some were horizontal, it was the most fun she’s had all day. He looks like the Valeyard though, and in brief moments she felt a spike of panic with him. She often wondered if the Doctor always had that funny look in his eyes and she never noticed, or if she’d only just imagined it. Maybe she was over thinking it, maybe the ear piece only took her imagined fears of the Valeyard and implemented them in with the Doctor.

Who knows?

Opening the suite door she steps in, tossing the key on the table by the door. “Oi,” she calls, “I’m back! What you get up to?” Rose calls to the Master as she steps into the bathroom to change.

“Working,” The Master replies, “I’ve been mending the paneling…I want to change her appearance I think.”

“Good luck with that,” Rose muses allowed, “Doctor’s been trying to do that for years and couldn’t fix it.”

“Rubbish,” The Master replies, “he could have fixed it he just didn’t want to…he _likes_ the way she looks.”

“I do too actually,” Rose replies as she steps out of the bathroom in lounge clothes, a mauve colored tank top and white velvet cut off sweats. She stops, meeting the Master’s gaze and tries very hard to keep a straight face. He’s got a pair of funny looking glasses on that make his eyes bug out and appear cross-eyed. For all the world he looked quite serious, clearly unaware of how they make him look—or he simply didn’t care. The next thing she notices of course….is the TARDIS.

“Oh…” Rose trails off, blinking at the silver cylindrical tube that was the TARDIS currently. “Um…”

“Default setting,” the Master sniffs as he works, “I’ll change it eventually…I just need to mend a few things…what?” he frowns at her, noting the pink tinge to her cheeks. “What is it?”

“It looks like a…” she can’t say the word aloud, especially in front of him, “Um…”

“Like a _what_?” he presses, looking at the TARDIS and then at her curiously.

“Do all TARDIS’s come like that…in default setting?” Rose fights very hard not to grin.

_Keep a straight face…do not laugh…do not laugh…_

“Yes…why?” he quirks a brow.

“No reason,” Rose smiles, fighting the laugh that threatens to burst from her lips, “You just keep…working.”

“Rose Tyler,” he says as she turns to head out onto the balcony, “I’ll need your help later.”

“Oh I’m sure you will,” Rose giggles, biting her lip as she fights an all-out belly deep laugh.

 

                                           

* * *

 

 

“How about now?” he calls from inside the TARDIS.

“No…it’s still just sort of…round and silver.”

“And now?” he calls again.

“It’s changing color…bit of pinkish-red really,” Rose replies.

“Almost,” the Master calls, “How about now?”

“Um…it’s red…a telephone booth?” Rose asks him curiously.

“That’s it!” the Master calls back, bounding out of the TARDIS to behold his masterpiece. “Very nice…better then what it was.”

“Blimey…” another voice interrupts, “Look at that paint job…you _would_ make it that bright.”

Both turn to gaze towards the man at the door, a screwdriver in one hand, the open door swung off to the side. “What have you _done_ to her?”


	2. The Holiday Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

 

“No…no…your not real…you can’t be…” Rose says aloud, turning to face the Doctor, “I left you back at the pool…”

“ _Yeeesss_ …” the Doctor replies slowly, “and I followed you up here…”

“No,” the Master says as he stares, “Not bloody possible—here I thought I’d finally gotten rid of you.”

“Oh, I know,” the Doctor says, “I thought I’d killed you…”

“You _tried_ ,” the Master scowls darkly at him.

“Not intentionally,” the Doctor replies seriously, “never intentionally...you have to understand why I did it.”

“Oh, I do,” the Master replies flatly, “believe me I do.”

Rose turns her gaze between the two Time Lords, “Do you two need some time alone?”

“No,” the Doctor replies, “Rose get over here…you don’t understand what he’s capable of.”

“Oh, but she does,” the Master replies nastily, “and she came with me _willingly_.”

“I doubt that,” the Doctor replies, “and even if she did it’s probably because she didn’t have a choice.”

“Does it bother you?” The Master replies casually, “that your former companion prefers my company to yours?”

“Ok hold on,” Rose interrupts, “You two…you’ve lost your home and your people and your way of life and now your bickering over _me_?” Rose scolds them both, “Honestly…don’t you think you two have bigger issues right now?”

“I haven’t lost anything,” the Master tells her pointedly, and she understands what he’s implying. This version of the Doctor doesn’t know that Gallifrey isn’t really gone and can’t know until much, much later.

“No she’s right,” the Doctor concedes, “you and I…were all we’ve got left.”

“I’m not moving in with you,” the Master says flatly, “I don’t do well in domestic situations.”

“We’ll neither do I,” the Doctor sniffs, “but perhaps it’s time we try?”

“Should I be planning the wedding?” Rose quirks a brow as she interrupts, “you two…” Rose throws both hands up, “I’m going to dinner…you two work out whatever it is you two need to work out…you know where I’ll be.”

 

                                                         

* * *

 

Where she ends up is not where she planned to be.

Stuck between two competitive Time Lords at a dinner table.

The Master sits to her left and the Doctor to her right on either end of the table while Rose is seated at the middle. Occasionally a tiny bit of vegetable goes flying past, smacking the Doctor in the shoulder. The conversation is light and quiet because every time Rose tries to talk to one of them the other interrupts and tries to steer the conversation away from the other.

It was by far the most awkward dinner Rose has ever attended.

They scowl at each other from across the table and eat methodically. The Doctor nibbles at a bit of potato and casually mentions, “Rose…did you know that on this planet they use bio-engineering to make these…can’t really grow Earth based food on alien soil without the proper--…”

“Everything here is organic,” the Master interrupts, “I wouldn’t take her somewhere like that.”

“Sounds to me you couldn’t really take her anywhere because you blew out the console--…” The Doctor starts.

“Only because your spotty workmanship blew to pieces,” the Master snaps back.

“Only because I didn’t have the spare parts but you have to admit, I did a good job for a while there…” the Doctor retorts.

“Stop it!” Rose snaps, slamming her wine glass down on the table. “Both of you…just _stop it_.”

Without another word, she stands and storms out of the restaurant, leaving two bewildered Time Lords to bicker amongst themselves.

 

                                                         

* * *

 

 

Fishing the ear piece from her purse she looks it over, “Blimey…this really _is_ happening.”

This was real—and what’s worse is that it’s entirely real and she told the Doctor _things_ ….she _kissed_ him….

But how did he get here?

“Rose!” she hears his voice call and she stops, turning to watch him run down the hall after her, “Rose wait.”

“How did you get here?” Rose asks suddenly, “I thought the walls were closed.”

“It was a long nine hours,” he tells her in response with a sly grin, “you remember that time I disappeared for nine hours and came back—left you with your Mum?”

“Yes,” Rose replies slowly, “but you had a different face then and it isn’t like you can just change back.”

“True,” he nods, “but we ran across each other and found the hole…and I knew things he didn’t…so he told me to go and he’d hold open the way.”

This wasn’t adding up.

But she didn’t have the ear piece in…

This _had_ to be real…right?

A scream interrupts their conversation, both turning in the direction of the sound. This was how it always started with him…a sudden scream, a mystery…

“Come on,” he grabs her hand and pulls her along without waiting for an answer, both of them running head long into danger just like they used to.

“Nothing to see here,” the manager calls as he urges the crowd back. Rose and the Doctor walk up slowly, eyeing the situation. It takes her a couple of seconds to register that he’s holding her hand before she pulls her own free from his. “Oi…don’t be saucy.”

“What?” he pulls a face—he almost looks hurt that she pulled away, “what’d you mean?”

“You…hand holding—the Master told me what that’s about on your planet.”

The Doctor rolls his eyes, “It doesn’t count if it isn’t with my own kind…hand holding on your planet’s like friendship—I don’t see it as…as…well…”

“Kissing,” Rose finishes for him and looks away, fighting the tinge of pink to her cheeks, “I’m sorry about earlier by the way…I thought you weren’t real and…”

And he’s not even listening…he’s already darted off to the front of the crowd.

Figures.

Rose weaves her way through, popping up beside the Doctor curiously. There on the floor was a man who’d clearly been outdoors…and somehow fell to his death from the ground floor of the hotel…

“How did he…” Rose trails off as the Doctor examines the remains.

 “Nearly every bone shattered…he fell from quite a height I’m guessing,” the Doctor surmises thoughtfully before looking at Rose and then at the manager, “Oh sorry…Hi…I’m the Doctor and this is eh…my assistant.” He smiles cheerfully and flashes his psychic paper before continuing to look over the remains.

“Bit intense for virtual reality, isn’t it?” Rose remarks as the Doctor stands and pulls her out of the crowd and down the hall.

“Clearly something’s gone wrong…that man didn’t just fall to his death—did you notice anything missing?”

“Not really,” Rose asks as they walk quickly back towards the hotel room.

“His spinal cords all wrong—completely fried,” the Doctor explains, “Rose let me see your earpiece.”

She hands it over, watches him turn it over in his hand and prodding it with his screwdriver, “What’s wrong?”

“These things are designed to tap into your nervous system, artificially recreate the atmosphere and present whatever it is you choose as a semblance of reality. Say if you wanted to visit your Mum, you’d pick your Mum and you’d be at her flat for the holidays eating _nut loaf_ and watching the tele while she burns the turkey again,” he says with a playful grin.

Rose smacks him on the arm, “she only did that _once_.”

“Yeah well that _one_ time was more than enough…” the Doctor replies as they step into the hotel room and stop mid-step.

“I hate it…” Rose tells the Doctor quietly with her eyes on the TARDIS—it was back to the default setting again. “It looks like a…”

“Like a what?” the Doctor asks and she can tell by his gaze he honestly didn’t have a clue.

“She won’t say,” the Master answers for her, stepping out of the TARDIS, “I’m still playing with the settings mind you…I don’t really like the default setting either.”

“I think she looks lovely,” the Doctor says cheerfully, patting the side of the TARDIS warmly, “even if she’s running about naked.”

“Oh _wow_ ,” Rose chuckles and then immediately wipes the smile off her face, swallowing her sudden mirth.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

The Master and Rose sit side by side, watching the Doctor look over the additions the Master made to the TARDIS. Rose watches the Doctor thoughtfully, if not a little suspiciously. “Can you sense him?”

“What?” the Master frowns at her curiously.

“The Doctor—can you sense him...Does it feel like _him_?” Rose presses.

“Course,” the Master says in response, “I’d know if it wasn’t him—why?”

“Virtual reality’s taken a bit of detour…it killed this bloke out in the hall earlier…we were looking over the body and the Doctor found the spinal cord’s been fried. How’d it do that do you think?”

“Dunno,” he shrugs, “Many different options considering the ear piece is designed to tap into your nervous system.”

“I mean I just…” Rose pauses as she reaches over to pick up a champagne flute from the table beside her—the Master discovered a bottle of it in the mini fridge earlier—and stares at her bare hand, “Where are my gloves?”

“I dunno,” the Master tells her, “Not really my job is it?”

“No,” Rose tells him, “ _look_.”

The Master eyes her bare hand on the glass and then looks at her, after a moment of silence he says, “Oh don’t be dramatic—perhaps Bad Wolf is triggered by your emotions…your simply not upset at the moment so nothing’s happening.”

“This place isn’t time insulated?” Rose questions him.

“No…” the Master trails off as the Doctor approaches them.

“Oi…you two,” he tells them both pointedly, “I’m over here being clever and you’re _completely_ ignoring me.”

“Stay out of my TARDIS,” the Master scowls as he walks past, shutting the doors to keep the Doctor from going back inside.

“Oi,” the Doctor says as he stuffs his hands in his pockets, “It was my TARDIS before it was ever yours.”

“It was _never_ your TARDIS,” the Master snaps suddenly and he turns to look at him, “You never flew it, you never so much as stepped a single _toe_ inside of it till today…it was grown here in this universe and she’s never had a _proper_ pilot before now. She is _mine_ , not yours… so _step off_.”

Before the Doctor can reply Rose cuts in sharply, “ _Right_ …so…about that fried spinal cord.”

Well if that wasn’t the oddest sentence she’s said today…

“Ah yes,” the Doctor chimes in, “Right so…let’s go sort it, shall we?”

“No,” the Master says, “You’ll go sort it…she’s staying here with me.”

“I am?” Rose blinks.

“Yes,” the Master tells her pointedly, “Your helping me with the repairs.”

“I thought you didn’t want me meddling?” Rose quirks a brow.

“That was when you were melting bits of the TARDIS…your fine now,” the Master motions for her to follow, “Come along Rose Tyler.”

“You hardly need her help do you?” The Doctor frowns as he holds out a hand to Rose, “Come on.”

 _Oh bugger_.

They were both staring at her expectantly.

“Right,” Rose says upon a sigh, “I’m not letting you two drag me into your little testosterone fueled grudge match.”

“We don’t have testosterone,” the Master answers her, “Something similar but in much higher quantities then any of the males on your primitive little planet I can assure you.”

“You know what I mean!” Rose snaps, “you two need to sort this out already…stop measuring screwdrivers and just…just…” Rose stomps her foot with a growl—a bit childish she admits—but they were being _so_ frustrating right then.

When they say nothing, she glowers at them both and storms off towards the door, “Oh piss on both of you—I’ll sort this mess out myself.”

“I’ll come along,” the Doctor answers and turns towards the door.

“ _No_ ,” Rose points at him firmly, “No you won’t cuse if ya do I’m like to break that screwdriver of yours over your _head_!”

The Doctor freezes mid step, eyes widening in surprise at her outburst.

“Shows how much you know about her,” the Master murmurs near the Doctor’s ear as he passes, “Don’t you recognize that look? The tone of her voice…the way she’s standing…all warning signs that following her would be hazardous to your health or in my case,” he smirks as he glances towards Rose briefly, “to my wardrobe.”

The Doctor blinks—clearly misunderstanding—and shifts his gaze between Rose and the Master.

“Not like _that_ ,” Rose quickly intervenes, “We were trapped in the TARDIS and he was driving me barmy so I hid his clothes and left out some of your stuff and he went naked rather than wear them.”

“Ah,” the Doctor shifts his gaze between them, clearly not liking how things are going, “I see…you know these suits really aren’t that uncomfortable.”

“I’d rather walk around bare ass _naked_ then wear your clothes,” the Master tells him flatly, “Right through the bloody citadel before the council if I must.”

“It was a bit of an error on my part,” Rose says quietly in the background.

“You’ll never steal them again will you?” the Master smirks at her.

“She once hid my coat,” the Doctor mutters, clearly knowing that his experience doesn’t quite match up.

“I didn’t hide it,” Rose rolls her eyes, “I had it washed…you got maple syrup all down the front of it.”

“Right,” the Master smacks his hands together and walks towards the door, “Let’s go sort out the fiasco downstairs.”

“Since when did you like meddling?” Rose quirks a brow.

“I love a good meddle,” the Master sniffs, “only if it benefits me.”

“Right,” the Doctor replies dryly.

This was going to be interesting.

 

                                       

* * *

 

 

 

“You can’t both scan it you know,” Rose tells them both, “How does that help?”

“Always good to have a second opinion,” the Doctor says as he eyes his screwdriver and then the computer panel before him.

“Even if mine’s better,” the Master quirks.

_Honestly…_

“This is ridiculous…you two are grown men…. over a thousand years old and your acting like children,” Rose scolds them firmly, “You,” she points at the Doctor, “Go scan the remains again and you,” she nods towards the Master, “Go get me a martini from the bar.”

The Doctor makes a face but does as he’s told; the Master doesn’t budge.

“ _Go_ ,” Rose says more forcefully, staring him down.

“There’s no controlling a control freak Rose,” the Doctor calls as he goes.

“Wanna bet?” Rose glowers at the Master.

“Rose Tyler,” he says as he tucks his screwdriver away in his pocket and pulls up a chair before her, neatly sitting backwards on it with his arms crossed over the back of the chair. “I am not accustomed to be bossed around. I don’t like it and you know it. Don’t presume to think I’ll do as you ask just because your cross with me.”

“ _Martini_ ,” Rose nods towards the bar pointedly.

“Here you are miss,” the waitress pauses at their table, setting the glass down before her and then turning to walk off.

“Um…” Rose trails off.

“I ordered it for you when we got here,” the Master says as he takes a sip from her glass and makes a face, “Needs another olive and little less vermouth…nice and dry though, it’s lovely you should try it.”

“Peace offering?” Rose asks as she sips it.

“Yes,” he says, “please don’t hide my coat again…I really do like that coat.”

“I like it too,” Rose admits, “not that I was wearing it or anything.”

“You were,” he tells her, “don’t bother lying I can smell you all over it.”

“I was cold,” she admits, “you shut off all the heating in my room and I had it hid in my closet…so I put it on—by the way, why was my Mum’s egg mixer in your pocket?”

“To keep her from using it,” he says as he stands, walking off towards the Doctor.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

Two hours later and Rose Tyler finds herself running through the basement with the Master hot on her heels while the Doctor runs ahead, long coat flapping behind him as he goes.

“I _told_ you this was a bad idea!” the Master snarls, “and _now_ look what you’ve done!”

“Oh stop complaining,” the Doctor shouts, “this has to be better than…” he slams to a halt and Rose nearly runs right into him.

What they’d found in that basement had finally found them.

There was an alien lifeform, sentient in nature living inside the machine and it was feeding off the electrical impulses inside the human brain which ends up killing the human in question. The higher the adrenaline of said human, the more electrical impulses the brain gives off…which in turns makes for a bigger meal for the lifeform.

“We’ve got to shut this whole thing down!” the Doctor shouts as he dives forward, yanking levers and switches while the Master scrambles up a ladder to head for the second level.

“Rose with me!” the Master shouts as he goes.

“No,” the Doctor snaps, “I need her down here!”

“Not now!” Rose shouts at them both, “everyone on this planet is in danger and you two need to stow that shit for another time!”

Split decision made, Rose Tyler scrambles after the Master. She helps him pull off the paneling and cuts wire to re-route the mainframe off world. The quickest way to shut down the whole system was to cut the signal between the satellite feeds and the machine itself.

Five minutes later the Doctor is shouting and Rose is being dragged by the arm along behind the Master who all but shoves her down the ladder and then follows.

“Hurry up!” the Doctor shouts, “This whole place is going to blow!”

“ _Of course it is_!” Rose shouts back irritably—every time they do something like this is always seems to result in something getting blown up.

All she wanted was a relaxing vacation on a leisure planet…

 

                                         

* * *

 

 

 

An hour later and they’re all three sitting by the pool while the sound of sirens and alarms blare behind them. People are gathering outside while the system is rebooted. The Doctor reassure them that the creature is gone now, the bit of the main frame that blew was where it had been hiding but now that it’s gone they’ll be able to reboot the system and use the backup system to support it. Rose is exhausted, sitting on the edge of the pool, trailing her feet in the water as she stares at her own reflection. The Doctor drops down beside her, putting his own feet in the water after rolling up his trousers.

“I know you love me,” he says quietly after a beat.

Rose blinks at him and only now notices the Master is gone. She wonders where he’s gotten off too…

“I didn’t realize it was really you…I wouldn’t have…” Rose trails off.

“Rightly so,” he smiles faintly, takes her hand in his and presses their palms together. It’s such a bizarre feeling of warmth Rose gasps a little, struck by the sensation. “Now you know why we don’t do it very often,” the Doctor smiles faintly at her, “It’s…intimate.”

They continue to hold hands, that flush of warmth blossoming between their palms and steadily up her arm right to her heart. It was like sunshine and warm summer days, she could feel him, this beam of light dancing around the edges of her mind. The Doctor would never intrude without permission, he knew all too well that she disliked it. “I see what you mean now, yeah,” Rose smiles wanly, stares at their intertwined hands, “nothing close to kissing the way humans do.”

“Never understood it,” the Doctor sniffs, “it’s a bit messy…and wet.”

Rose laughs, “Yeah it can be if it isn’t done right.”

“You know I can’t…” he trails off before beginning again, “I can’t Rose…you know I can’t.”

“River,” Rose nods in understanding.

“You know about her,” he says softly, “what do you think?”

“I like her,” Rose says, “I mean…from what I’ve heard about her…she sounds great.”

“She is,” he tells her honestly, “and…she’s like me…”

“I know,” Rose says stiffly, the warmth in her heart suddenly freezing over as she pulls her hand free of his. It was like having a bucket of ice water dumped over her head on a hot day. Rose Tyler would always be too human for the Doctor to ever love.

“If you want,” the Doctor says quietly, staring at their suddenly parted hands, “I can take you home…or anywhere you want really.”

There it is…that chance to travel with him again, to be at his side and explore the universe….

And she doesn’t want it.

Not like this.

“I think…” Rose says slowly, “I think I’ll stay here…with the Master. He needs me you know…needs somebody really…he’s so….”

“I know,” the Doctor smiles with a little nod, “I think if anyone can mend him it’ll be you Rose Tyler…after all, you fixed me—mind you, you’ve got your work cut out for you with that one.”

“Tell me about it,” Rose grins with a little laugh.

“If you ever get into trouble,” the Doctor says, “Call me alright?”

“Yeah,” Rose smiles as she watches him stand, Rose following suit. They hug tightly, wish each other well and she watches him walk off back to the TARDIS without her.

Then without ceremony, everything went dark.

 

                                         

* * *

 

Rose blinks away the sunshine, realizing that she’s standing in the hotel corridor alone. It takes her a full minute to register what’s happened.

None of it had been real.

The Doctor had never really been here.

No sentient machine monsters, no Doctor, no epic adventures….it was all a simulation.

She drops to the floor and sits with her back to the wall; her knees had gone weak. She cries because she must, wiping mascara from under her eyes when it’s over. The last thing she needs is for the Master to see her crying. She sits for a long while, catching her breath, settling her emotions. Thankfully her gloves are back on but her bare feet on the carpet have begun to make worn looking patterns in the fabric. “Oh fuck.” Rose scowls and stands, storming down the hall towards the room. When she opens the door, she stops short, surprised.

There was forest in her room.

A forest of tall pale trees with shimmering silver leaves, miles and miles of rolling red grass and a burnt orange sky the color of sunrise at dawn. Rose steps forward, her bare feet warm on the grass, walking along beneath the swaying trees as sunlight makes the leave shine like diamonds and dance in the wind. She finds the Master sitting beneath an old silver leaf tree atop a hill, looking down over the wide expanse of a valley. She sits beside him, stretching her legs out before her as she leans back against the tree and gazes upon a sprawling manor house in the distance. “It’s beautiful…where are we?”

“Gallifrey,” the Master answers quietly, his gaze on the distant horizon, “my Father’s estates.”

“What—that’s your house?” Rose asks him curiously, nodding towards the manor in the distance.

“Yes,” he nods, “The house of Oakdown.”

“It’s beautiful,” Rose tells him, bumping his shoulder playfully with a little grin as she tries to cheer him up, “Can I see it?”

“You’re looking at it,” the Master nods towards it, “Trust me this is close enough.”

“What are these trees called?” Rose asks, lying back in the grass to gaze up at the branches above her.

“You couldn’t pronounce it,” the Master replies evenly, his gaze on the valley still.

“I had myself an interesting little adventure today,” Rose tells him, “The Doctor came to visit…of course it wasn’t real and I hadn’t realized it wasn’t…definitely a bit of a mess if I’m honest.”

“Was he as _delightfully_ irritating in the simulation as he is in person?” The Master asks her a little snidely.

“Actually, I should have noticed something was off,” Rose admits, “you two…you were acting so odd…”

“ _Both_ of us?” the Master looks at her now, eyebrows raised, “You had us both in the simulation—my, my aren’t you _greedy_.”

“How come it did that?” Rose asks, “I never decided on anything.”

“You did,” he says quietly, “it bases the simulation off your desires. Your dreams…what you’re thinking about. It’s a bit psychic that ear piece.”

“Now you tell me,” Rose laughs, rubbing her face tiredly, “does this mean you’re one of my desires?”

“Don’t be so surprised,” he sniffs indignantly, “I was considered quite the catch on my planet.”

“There really is something wrong with me,” Rose laughs and gets to her feet. “Come on…race you to the manor.”

“Rose Tyler I hardly think it would be a fair race as I’m taller then you and my species is---…” he cuts off when she darts away and he considers just letting her run off on her own…but then again he doesn’t like to lose at anything.

He runs after her, the warm afternoon breeze in his hair, her laughter ringing across the valley, the smell of rolling red grass and the shining silver leaves dancing like diamonds against a burnt orange sky. It was real…but just for today he could pretend it was.

 


	3. Cybermen and Birthdays Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

“That’s not fair!” Rose laughs, eyes wide with amusement.

The Master shrugs, “Hardly my fault your sorry little species can’t hold their liquor.” He sets the shot glass down on the table and smirks at her.

“My sorry little species doesn’t have two of everything,” Rose replies with a nod in his direction, “I was outnumbered right from the start.”

The party was in full swing, the whole city was singing, dancing, there were colorful banners floating freely through the air, food and drink and joy saturated sight and smell in every direction. They’d landed by happy chance on a planet where they spend every day celebrating something. It’d taken them four tries before they landed here, two of those tries dropped them in the middle of a desert and on a planet called Midnight, somewhere the Master was keen to leave as quickly as possible for some bizarre reason.

“Your turn,” he nods towards the shot glass before her. She tips it back, determined to win. They’d made a bet that whoever could finish seven of these would get to spin the wheel and hope they land somewhere nice. The Master was keen to win—intended too—he didn’t particularly like giving up control of anything, especially his TARDIS. Seven was for the number of regenerations he’s had thus far.

“Lucky number seven eh?” Rose winks at him, feeling the warm effects of liquor hit her bloodstream.

“Oh yes,” he nods, “Though I’m not very partial to the blond…I’ve never been blond before.”

“Us blondes got to stick together eh,” Rose grins as she clinks her shot glass with his and they down their third one together.

“Feeling it yet?” he smirks at her, especially when she can’t seem to set her shot glass down without it toppling over on the table.

“Gimme a minute,” she tells him, “I’ll drink you right under the table.”

Things have been better lately, less bickering and more laughter. They were getting used to each other, learning the other’s quirks. Rose understood his love of control, his need to organize and be neat and keep things in certain places and she was careful not to mess it up. He discovered how much of a bear she is in the morning and meets her first with a hot cup of tea and waits for her to drink most of it before speaking to her.

Rose can almost tell when he’s lying now.

Almost.

She can read his body language though most of the time she can’t predict what he’s going to do. The Master is the most unpredictable person she’s ever met, just when she thinks she’s got him pinned down he totally surprises her. He also doesn’t react the way she expects, the clothing fiasco for example. The Doctor would be cross but apologize…the Master just threw it back in her face but prancing naked through the TARDIS.  He’s particular about her cooking and demands he do the cooking instead, gets testy if she makes a face and forces her to stand there and taste things while he’s cooking because he—which she thinks secretly—enjoys her reactions to it. He knows her favorite color which is weird because she hadn’t realized he knew it. He changed the display on her bedroom into soft warm colors that were soothing and relaxing. He was talented with design and color scheme, liked to iron his clothes and if shaving her an Olympic sport he’d win the gold for sure.

“Penny for your thoughts,” the Master says casually, noting her distance.

“You,” Rose tells him honestly, “I’m jealous…wish I could shave like you.” She grins cheekily, takes another shot and downs it.

“To bad you don’t have a beard, then isn’t it?” he smirks and downs his fourth shot.

“I’m half tempted to hide your razors just to see this epic beard of yours,” Rose tells him, nibbling at the peanuts—or what she thinks might be peanuts—in the wooden bowl between them on the table.

“I could just stop shaving,” he shrugs, “I just did it because I felt like I needed too—something different.”

“If you want,” Rose shrugs, “Beard…no beard…your still you.”

“I found a shop earlier today,” he tells her, “sells parts we can use.”

“Oh yeah?” Rose grins, “how do you propose we get them?”

“With great stealth and charm,” he grins cheekily, “and a little mischief.”

“Sounds like a party,” Rose laughs, “Speaking of party…drink up,” she nods towards the fifth set of shot glasses between them, “Three more and I win.”

“I win,” he tells her as he downs it, “I’m not even feeling particularly _warm_ …you look like your about to tip out of your chair.”

“I hope you plan on carrying me back,” she chuckles lightly, “my win might be a fail all at once.”

“I don’t carry people,” he sniffs, “you’ll wrinkle my suit.”

“I’d carry you,” Rose tells him playfully, “Fireman’s style of course…I doubt I could lift you in the traditional sense.”

“I doubt you could lift me at all Rose Tyler,” he answers as he nibbles at the peanuts between them, “my bone density is twice as thick as a human male, I weigh quite a lot more than you think.”

“Mmm…” she nods, leaning back in her chair as the world around her gets even warmer, the music begins to sound wonderful and she has the distinct urge to go dancing. She watches him down another shot—his sixth—and watch her intently as he nods to the glasses between them.

“On with it,” he tells her and Rose sits up, downs her fifth and very nearly unable to drink the sixth. She was starting to feel a bit tipsy—this may have been a bad idea.

“Feel alright?” he grins knowingly over his seventh shot glass, a knowing gleam in his eye. “You can stop now if you want Rose Tyler…I’m a reasonable man, I’ll accept your surrender.”

“Piss on that,” Rose scoffs and downs her sixth them picks up her seventh, stares at it and then at him. “Oh, bloody hell…”

He laughs, a deep belly laugh as he leans back, shaking his head, “I told you.”

“Oh, shut it,” Rose laughs, laying her head down on the table, “I feel so _weird_.”

“Medasian Whiskey,” he tells her, “It’s powerful even by my people’s standards…but it still takes quite a bit of it to get me drunk.”

“I’d be afraid to see you drunk,” Rose laughs, the wood of the table feels good against her overheated skin.

“Me too,” he admits and drinks her seventh one for her before paying the tab. They get up and walk—Rose stumbles more than walks—out onto the crowded streets. Rose dances and laughs and twirls through the crowd, bouncing on the balls of her feet to the deep heavy beat of the music, the haunting notes, the primal drumming…. she looks back and frowns, realizing she is alone. He’s hovering off to one side, watching her through the thick of the crowd. Rose has flowers in her hair, and she weaves through the crowd, walking towards him, worried by the flicker of pain in his eyes.

“Oi,” Rose calls, “you ok?”

“I’m fine,” he murmurs but his deep brown eyes are on her face—is she drunk? —why is she thinking about how deep his eyes are?

“You sure about that?” Rose asks, grinning when she tucks a white flower behind one of his ears, “Come on…lighten up…” then she pauses in thought, “It’s the drums isn’t it?”

He nods quietly, “Bad memories.”

“Go on then,” Rose tells him, “You don’t have to stay with me if you want to head back to the TARDIS...I’ll catch up with you later…unless you want me to go with you?”

“I’ll be fine…go have fun” he shrugs her off but she notices he doesn’t take the flower from his hair, and turns away from her before starting back towards the TARDIS, “See you later.”

“See you…” Rose calls back, watching him go before disappearing back into the crowd. Part of her wanted to go with him but there was a look on his face that told her he wanted to be alone. So she weaves her way deeper into the crowd, closer to the entrancing drum beat, closer to the music and sound and lets it carry her away under a sea of stars and flowers floating above her in the air.

 

                                               

* * *

 

 

“Morning sunshine,” a voice says, and Rose wrinkles her nose in pain. Her head was absolutely throbbing. She was laying on the grating of the TARDIS, the cold metal was hard on her back. She rolls over, her gaze levelling with the hem of a purple skirt and black polished boots. Rose blinks, following it up to the dark haired woman wearing them. She quirks a brow at her, magenta lipstick, carefully applied make-up, perfectly polished nails, the neatly coiffed hair…

“You!” Rose blurts as she sits up and immediately regrets it, lying back down again, “Oh bloody hell my _head_ …”

“Me,” she tells Rose cheekily and steps over her, “Hello again.” She cheerfully yanks on a lever and the TARDIS jerks sharply, taking off into flight.

“Hold on!” Rose cries out, “It’s broken…we’ll leave him behind _wait_!”

She tuts as she walks around the TARDIS, “Oh dear that would be a bit of a bother, wouldn’t it?” she sighs dramatically, “if we were in _his_ TARDIS.”

“Where am I?” Rose says, noting the crackling fireplace, the polished leather seats and the mahogany table between them.

“Where do you _think_?” she asks Rose, smirking knowingly.

“You are a Time Lord, I knew it!” Rose tells her, scrambling to her feet.

“Please,” she rolls her eyes, “Time _Lady_.”

“Whatever…take me back!” Rose demands, “you can’t just kidnap like this.”

“Oh but I already have dear, haven’t you noticed?” she nods towards the console, “Were in flight.”

“Take me back!” Rose demands angrily.

“Oh no can’t do that—sorry—mind pouring me a cup?” she nods towards the kettle on the table behind Rose, “Let me just sort out this mess and we’ll sit and have a nice long _chat_. Girl talk—you know.” She grins cheekily and turns away, twisting knobs and turning levers as she goes.

“You take me back right now,” Rose growls, rounding the console to glare at her. She ignores her completely, tapping keys on the console before looking at her.

“ _Oh_ look at you,” she says, “so full of _spunk_ —quite the wild one aren’t you? I bet your boyfriends happy eh?” she grins with a little chuckle and an overdramatic wink, “Between us girls…he’s a looker eh?”

“Who are you?” Rose frowns at her, “what do you want with me?”

“Who do you think I am?” she grins cheekily at her, “go on—guess—humor me.”

Rose stares, her gaze swiveling around the TARDIS, “I dunno….the Doctor?” Rose blurts out—it could be him right? He can regenerate into a woman and his tastes have been known to change with each regeneration…maybe it was him?

The smile on the woman’s face immediately drops off, “ _No_ ,” she says in a heavy Scottish accent, “I’m not _the Doctor_!” She yanks a lever on the console sharply and the whole TARDIS shutters and jerks sharply to the right.

“Ok…” Rose trails off, “I don’t really know any other time…people…besides The Master and the Doctor and the Master’s back on that planet and the Doctor’s in another universe…sooo…” Rose trails off expectantly.

“Missy,” she tells her, “I’m Missy and your _Rose_.” She grins knowingly and looks at her expectantly, “Where’s my tea?” Her lilting Scottish accent is delicate and almost comical at moments, she likes to play with the notes of her voice, switching between light and playful to deep and frightening at the drop of a hat. Right now, she was light and playful though she can tell Missy was feeling anything but that at the moment. “I asked for _tea_.”

Rose glowers hotly, “No _tea_ …you tell me why you’ve kidnapped me.”

“For want of your company, why else?” she laughs teasingly and circles around the console, dropping down into one of the leather chairs, “Come on dear…think about it—why would I kidnap you?” Rose watches her pour herself a cup and then nods towards the other chair beside hers. “Sit.”

“Rose Tyler,” she says slowly after a beat, “you don’t get to call me _Rose_ …we don’t know each other.”

“Don’t we?” she asks softly, watching Rose with hooded eyes before changing the subject, “Sit down dear, no need to hover—it’ll be a while before we land anyways.”

“The Master will be looking for me,” Rose threatens quietly, “he’ll find me.”

“You think so?” she quirks a brow, “Dear you’ll be back before he even knows you were gone—keep your knickers on and _sit down_.” Her voice ends in a growl, her eyes flashing.

Rose sits reluctantly, watches Missy pour her a cup, “Drink.” She tells her, proffering the cup to her. She waits for Rose to do so before settling back in her chair, sighing contently with her feet outstretched towards the fire, “Nice and cozy isn’t it?”

“Tell me why I’m here…” Rose repeats slowly.

“Because I want you to be dear,” Missy says, “Now don’t fret…I’ll get you back safe and sound—lover boy won’t even know your gone.”

This was clearly getting nowhere.

Rose instead observes her as she stares at the fire. Dark chestnut locks curled and pinned neatly atop her head, elegant make-up, neat clothing, an Edwardian flare. She’s beautiful certainly, and there was something so oddly familiar about her…

“Lose something over here dear?” Missy quirks a brow curiously, “Like what you see?”

“Just…I couldn’t ever get my hair to do that,” Rose laughs nervously, knows that her lie was a terrible cover-up for getting caught gawking.

“Oh it takes me _hours_ ,” Missy sighs dramatically, “and you know that man doesn’t even notice…” she scoffs, “I get all prettied up for him and he hardly takes a second glance.”

“Men do that sometimes,” Rose nods thoughtfully.

“Oh and those _eyebrows_!” Missy says aloud, “I could chip a tooth on those things!”

Who were they talking about?...

Missy appeared to be going off on her own little tangent so Rose listened quietly, unsure of what to make of her. “Drunk as a skunk you were,” Missy tells her somewhere near the end of her tangent, “Took me _ages_ to get you back here.”

Rose couldn’t remember how she’d even got there.

“Are you stalking the Master or something? I mean…why not just talk to him instead…cuse you know there aren’t many time lords around here and our console’s all messed up and he could use the help and…” Rose trails off at the look on her face.

“No dear…I’m not _stalking_ the Master…” she looks briefly amused before sipping her tea. “Quite a handsome character, isn’t he? I’d be scared _witless_ to follow him…” she flusters a little, “Gets me all hot just thinking about him.” She makes a show of it, winking at Rose playfully.

Oh _please_ …

A bell dings in the background and she sets her cup aside, “Ah—that’ll be the guard.”

Rose watches Missy flip a few switches, a hint of mischief in her eye before she turns to look at Rose, “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m about?”

“Um…” Rose starts.

“Never mind—I’ll tell you,” she cuts her off, circling the console, Rose notices for the first time there is a vortex manipulator on her wrist but hasn’t the time to question her about it, “You’re going to help me get the Doctor’s birthday present ready—doesn’t that sound nice?” she grins cheekily as the TARDIS rocks and sways, Missy walking about as if nothing were amiss, “and I need you to help me gather a few things.”

“The Doctor’s birthday?” Rose blinks at her.

“Yes,” she smiles coyly, “Cheeky bugger—thought I’d forget…seems you have though,” Missy sniffs idly, filing her nails with one that she produced from her pocket, her hip leaning against the console for balance, “and here I thought you loved him—you don’t even know his _birthday_.”

“Why _me_?” Rose asks, “How do you know the Doctor?”

“My goodness,” she remarks casually as she comes to a stop by the table where Rose sits and lifts the saucer with her own cup to her lips, “You’re a bit slower then I remember you being—have you hit your head perchance?”

“No,” Rose sputters indignantly, “I’m not helping you do anything to hurt him!”

“ _Hurt him_?” she says delicately in that odd comical voice, “Darling it’s his birthday…I just want to make it a _good one_.”

 

 

                                 

* * *

 

 

They land with a graceful settling upon London soil in the late afternoon. Rose steps out first, inhaling deep the fresh air as her gaze turns towards the Temps.

“Hold on,” Rose’s smile fades, panic stirring in her chest, “Where are all the zeppelins?”

“Oh sorry,” Missy says casually, nudging Rose onward out of the TARDIS, “Forgot to mention—welcome back to the universe prime.”

“I thought we couldn’t come back here?” Rose blinks at her in surprise, “The walls between worlds and all.”

“Yes,” she tells her, “and that’s if Gallifrey were gone—which it isn’t—which means travel between worlds is possible again.”

Rose turns to stare at the city before her, the place where she was born, the home she dreamed of for years after the Doctor left her behind.

She was back.

“What are we doing here?” Rose asks her curiously, turning to look at her.

“Well first,” Missy begins with a purposeful stride towards a building in the distance, “Let me introduce you to my boys.”

 

                                   

* * *

 

 

“Cybermen…” Rose trails off as she stares and stares, “in a fish tank.”

“Not a fish tank,” Missy scowls as she paces the length of the hall, watching Rose watch the multitude of tanks surrounding them, “a _disguise_.”

“Why?” Rose asks curiously, “where’d they all come from?”

“Around,” Missy tells her cryptically, “of course…you and I still have to gather a few things—they’ll need people to fill them.”

“Hold on,” Rose pauses, frowning thoughtfully, “They’re just empty casing right now?”

“Yes,” Missy tells her, “Don’t you worry though,” she says, patting Roses head, “I’ll not hurt a single human on this planet to do that. I’ve worked it all out—even the Doctor can’t argue with the logic of it.”

“How?” Rose frowns, not liking this one bit.

“The dead,” she grins wickedly, “An army of the dead to wage a war across the stars—a gift _worthy_ of the Doctor—See?” she smiles but it isn’t particularly friendly, “I haven’t hurt anyone at all…not a single person—they’re already dead.”

“And how do I play into this?” Alarm bells are going off in her head, keen to keep her gaze on Missy because she felt it would be unwise to lose track of her right now.

“Oh, your just along for the ride,” Missy says, “your always complaining that I don’t spend enough time with you--- _now I am_.” Upon Rose’s puzzled look she adds, “Oh don’t worry—you’ll remember this eventually and when you do,” she nods knowingly, “you’ll be pleased.”

“I’m fairly certain if I even remoting had a clue what you’re on about I’d say this _wasn’t_ what I had in mind,” Rose mutters to herself and then pauses for a beat, “How are you going to fill them with the dead?” Rose frowns, unsure about any of this, “I hardly think this lot is enough for the whole planet.”

“Oh, get that look off your face,” Missy tells her with a chiding tone, “Your on _my_ side dear, none of that hero gazing.” She circles Rose, tapping the glass as she explains, “Each one can pollinate an entire continent…one for every continent on Earth. All you and I need to do is get them out there—they’ll do the rest.”

“I’m not gonna help you do this,” Rose stands her ground, “I’m not helping you take over the planet…I’m Torchwood…I _protect_ Earth.”

“Oh please,” she rolls her eyes theatrically, “stop it—this’ll be fun…you and me spending some quality time together and all. It’s for _the Doctor_ ,” Missy says as she starts down the hall, Rose following her hesitantly, “took me ages to sort out what to get him and after what I’ve seen—an army is what he needs.”

 

                                 

* * *

 

 

 

An hour later and Rose is sitting amongst piles of clothes and accessories, trying to sort out what to wear. Missy wouldn’t tell her where they were going, rather she said it was a surprise and to pick something from the wardrobe. Oddly enough, everything was fifties themed and she could see that Missy narrowed it all down to items she deemed Rose worthy to wear. Every shade of black, pink, white, frills and lace, corsets, gaudy jewelry and delicate little things, Rose was overwhelmed. Finally, she settled on a black short sleeve wide scoop neck fifties dress with a frilly powder pink underskirt to match, peeking ever so slightly out from beneath it. Matching powder pink heels and—much to Rose’s pleasure—matching powder pink nail polish to boot. She showers and scrubs herself down thoroughly—the Master always complains about the smell of humans and it makes her self-conscious—when she steps out of the shower she stares at her reflection in the foggy mirror and frowns.

The woman who looks at her now is older and wiser, no longer then nineteen-year-old who fell in love with a man who could never love her back. She isn’t that woman with the long blond hair and the wide innocent eyes, she’s seen too much horror, known to much sorrow to be that innocent young woman anymore. Rose Tyler has been through a lot during her years at Torchwood and she’s learned quite a bit about the world.  She makes a decision then as she rummages through drawers and cabinets until she finds what she’s looking for.

It was time for a change.

 

                                   

* * *

 

 

“ _Finally_ ,” Missy announces as Rose emerges from the bathroom and stops short upon turning to look at her. She stares for a moment and steps forward, perfectly manicured nails touching the soft blond curls that hang delicately around Rose’s face. “You cut your hair.”

“I needed a change,” Rose says quietly, turning away from Missy as she picks up the clothes she’s chosen.

“You’ll need a corset for that,” Missy says as Rose turns back towards the bathroom.

“I’ll manage,” Rose replies but stops as Missy snatches up a powder pink lace corset and motions her over.

“Nonsense,” Missy tells her, “No companion of mine is running about _indecent_.”

“I don’t know how to put that on,” Rose eyes the corset wearily, “last time I tried I had my girls all up in my face.”

“Yes…” Missy says, her expression suddenly a little sour, “I’m sure I can sort that—you clearly weren’t wearing the right one.”

Rose spends the next few minutes growling and wincing with her hands on the bedpost to stabilize her while Missy tugs at the corset laces. “This is ridiculous— _blimey_!” Rose gasps, a hand flying to her chest, “why did women ever wear these?”

“It’s a pain in the ass but it does give you a lovely figure,” Missy remarks as she ties off the corset, “Now get dressed—off you pop.” She waves her off, dropping down into one of the chairs by the fireplace in the guest room.

Ten minutes later Rose is smoothing the black material of her dress down over the underskirt neatly, polished powder-pink heels tapping lightly across hard wood floors as she steps into the room.

“Ah,” Missy lifts an eyebrow, her gaze sweeping over Rose, “better—the whole point of this exercise is to make you blend in. On Gallifrey nobody really has a modern sense of dress unless you’re at the academy. You should blend right in…I hope.”

“Gallifrey?” Rose blinks at her, “You didn’t tell me we were going to Gallifrey…. don’t you think they’ll notice my um…” Rose pauses for a beat, “My… _smell_?”

“Your smell?” Missy looks puzzled for a moment and then rolls her eyes, “I _may_ have been exaggerating a bit about your smell…I don’t particularly like humans…I think I’ve mentioned that before—aren’t you writing any of it down? You humans have a rather short memory I notice.” She stands and circles Rose, “the black dress is a nice touch…I like black—good strong color...on my planet it’s the color of war.”

“ _You_?” Rose freezes in place, realization dawning on her. “It’s you, isn’t it?” Rose asks, turning to face Missy who’s paused midstride to look at her as well. Rose can’t help herself for a moment, stepping close as she peers up into bright blue eyes beneath thick dark curls. “You…you…it’s really you…and you’re a woman…and…” Rose just stares, drinking it all in, letting it process for a moment. “I mean that’s fine that you’re a woman and all…I always knew your people could change gender when they regenerate I’ve just never seen it done and…”

“And?” Missy quirks a brow, “took you long enough to figure it out.”

“Hold on,” Rose says with a little frown, “does he know I’m with you? The other you that is…the one I left back on that planet before I got drunk and somehow ended up on the floor of your TARDIS—by the way is this a different TARDIS?”

“Yes,” Missy tells her, “different TARDIS— _No_ …he doesn’t know you’re with me and you’d best keep it that way. Foreknowledge Rose Tyler, is _dangerous_.”

“Where’s my TARDIS?” Rose wrinkles her brow in worry.

“You mean _my_ TARDIS?” Missy counters with a quirk of her brow, “ _Foreknowledge_ or as River calls it… _spoilers_.”

“Have you been a woman before?” Rose asks after a beat.

“Yes,” she replies slowly, debating her answer, “I’ve been a woman twice now…this being my second go—I think it’s definitely an upgrade, don’t you?” She twirls on the spot theatrically, her gaze expectant.

“Yeah,” Rose smiles a little, “your lovely.”

“Flattery Rose Tyler,” Missy tells her with a tinge of blush to her cheeks, “will get you _everywhere_.”

 

                                             

* * *

 

 

“And pink?” Rose quirks a brow as they walk towards the console room side by side.

“The color of innocence…” she pauses for a beat and presses a hand to her mouth to hide her smile, “what an odd pairing.” They’d been discussing color schemes previous to Rose’s epiphany and now Rose found herself curious as to the rest of it.

“Blue is for mourning,” Rose adds after a moment, “and pink is what—marriage…purity? Black is for war...”

“Mauve is for emergencies,” Missy tells her as they walk out to the console room, “and brown is for peace…I’ve never really looked right in brown.”

 “It’s alright…” Rose shrugs, thinking for a brief moment about the Doctor before pushing that memory away from her and focusing on the present once more.

“I’m wearing your corset aren’t I?” Rose asks her as she leans up against the console to watch Missy work.

“And my dress—my stockings…my shoes…” Missy trails off before looking at her, “I need you to smell like me. As I’m sure your aware, my people have an acute sense of smell. If they stand close enough to you they’ll know you’re not one of us…I doubt they’ll know your human but they’ll _definitely_ know you’re not Gallifreyan. If you wear my clothes my scent will mask yours…” Missy explains and adds under her breath as she turns away from Rose, “and keep them away from you.”

“What?” Rose frowns, watching her curiously.

“Nothing dear, it’s not important,” Missy replies, gently bringing the TARDIS neatly into a landing, a wicked grin on her face. “ _Were here_.”

 

                                             

* * *

 

 

“Tell me the plan again?” Rose murmurs quietly, sitting side by side with Missy on what looked like a cream colored version of the tube but above ground. It whipped across rolling orange landscapes, silver trees under the vibrant light of twin suns caught Rose up in a web of awe. She could scarcely look away from the sight, soaking in every sight and sound because Gallifrey is the one place she’s never been—the one place—she believed for so long was gone. Missy opted for this form of transportation because she wanted to remain inconspicuous but Rose secretly thinks Missy might have been giving her the opportunity to see every inch of Gallifrey she can. They’d landed outside the Oakdown Manor house way out in the middle of nowhere, and rather than go inside—must to Rose’s protest because she desperately wanted to see what the inside of a Gallifreyan household looked like—they went and stood at the stop and waited for the train.

“Naughty immortal Time Lords who’ll kill anyone stepping so much as a toe into the catacombs,” Missy murmurs, “you being what you are can walk right by them—they’re practically built to protect you—and you’ll go and get what I need.”

Cryptic words, designed because of the simple fact that the people on the train they’re riding have very good hearing.

She did not like this plan.

She didn’t want to break into the catacombs beneath the citadel and steal a Gallifreyan data matrix so Missy could go around collecting humans for her odd little birthday project. Nevertheless, here she was, unable to stop herself. It was exciting and naughty and the stuffy boring time lords in that gigantic glass dome won’t even know what hit them.

They go along for what seems like hours before they stop in the middle of a great city, and Rose trails alongside Missy towards the citadel. “Don’t look anyone in the eye,” Missy murmurs, “remember the etiquette I taught you—we don’t touch unless married—that’s taboo. It’d be like flirting and they’d think you a tart.”

“No eye contact,” Rose reiterates, “no touching…bow before time lord and ladies…acknowledge my betters…” Rose groans quietly, “you could have written me a list or something.”

“We pride ourselves on memory,” Missy sniffs, “you carting around a list would have been embarrassing.”

“I wouldn’t have cared,” Rose mutters.

“Not for _you_ silly,” Missy scolds lightly, “For me—embarrassing— _for me_.”

 

                                             

* * *

 

 

 

Being who she was, Missy couldn’t obviously show her face inside the citadel—they’d recognize her instantly. So naturally they don’t walk right through the front door, rather than enter through a hidden trap door in a long narrow corridor illuminated with brilliant florescent lights. This was the heart of the citadel Missy explained as they went, and only the first class of Time Lords ever walked these halls—and that she should be _grateful_ and very, very quiet. No other primitive species as ever seen it, Missy would sniff snobbishly as they go, and Rose Tyler should be honored to have the privilege.

They reach the wide metal doors of the catacombs and Missy pauses at the doors, turning to look at her. “Remember what I told you—keep walking—don’t stop, don’t look back. They’ll ignore you for the most part because you’re _literally_ radiating chronon energy. They’ll assume your important and leave you be. The vaults are just beyond the catacombs— _touch nothing_. That is important, Rose Tyler…the most important thing to remember…don’t snoop, don’t open boxes or books, ignore any voices you might hear and keep walking…only take the matrix and that’ll be fifth isle down from the right…” she pauses, as if recalling it from memory, “No left—sorry—and then…no wait it _is_ right never mind.” Missy sighs dramatically, “Regardless dear—don’t die—that’s a given I’d imagine and bring me back my matrix.”

“Right…” Rose turns towards the doors as Missy jabs the control panel sharply with her umbrella. Rose jumps at the sound of splintering electrical wire, bright sparks of light jutting out from the control box. The doors swing open unceremoniously, and before her looms a dark and errie looking room.

“Lovely,” Rose swallows thickly, “only you lot would have a haunted house beneath a citadel.”

“Oh,” Missy taps her lip, “One more thing,” she pauses for a moment and the smile on her face set’s Rose’s nerves on edge. It looks both dangerous and wry at the same time. Missy is quicker then she can move unfortunately—and has Rose backed up against the far wall before she can say a word about it.

“Missy what are you---…” Rose cuts off, eyes wide in surprise when Missy’s lips touch hers, demanding and delicate all at once. Rose can’t wiggle free and Missy presses her down harder whenever she tries. Then abruptly she backs away, a wicked giggle clenched behind her hands as she watches Rose’s reaction.

“ _Tongues_ …” Rose looks bewildered, catching her breath, “What was that for?”

“Rose Tyler,” Missy suddenly grows solemn and serious her lilting Scottish accent deepening ever so slightly, “I must admit to you how desperately…how _ardently_ I love you…”

Rose stares at her, a brow quirked, “Did you just quote _Pride and Prejudice_?”

“ _Maybe_ ,” she grins wryly.

“Do you really love me?” Rose blinks at her.

“No,” Missy retorts quickly, the amusement dropping off her face, “Just practicing.”

“For _what_?” Rose frowns curiously.

“ _My big entrance_ ,” she grins cheekily and nods towards the catacombs, “Off you pop.”

“You’ve got _two_ tongues!” Rose blurts out as Missy urges her forward, “How’d that happen? Does the Doctor have two tongues?”

“You’ll never find out,” Missy tells her with a sickly-sweet voice, her tone dropping off into a deeper Scottish bur towards the end, the smile dropping off her face, “and if he ever does kiss you, I’ll _kill him_.”

“Wait, _what_?” Rose is taken aback by the sudden turn in conversation, the sudden shift in Missy’s personality. One minute she’s being sarcastic and bitter-sweet and the next she practically oozes malice.

Was Missy really threatening her—did Missy have a thing for the Doctor? Why would she kill him for kissing her?

Maybe she was joking….?

“ _Byeeee_ ,” Missy waves, “hurry now—the guards should be here shortly but don’t worry…” Missy smiles with a hint of malice in her gaze, “I’ll take care of them.”

 

                                             

* * *

 

 

The catacombs are scarier on the inside then they are from the outside—how’s that for Time Lord technology?

Daleks, cybermen, old rusty looking robots…every different sort of creature in the universe was being eaten alive—or dead—by odd looking mossy vines wrapped around granite pillars in a vice like grip. Every now and then something flashes in the corner of her eye, something soundless that moves like the wind across empty streets and rustles the scattered debris at her feet. It doesn’t take long for her to discover the creature lurking in the shadows. It stops right in front of her and scares her so bad she falls over backwards, her foot caught on a vine. She stares up at it in horror, the ghostly apparition of Time Lord’s past, like a TV screen gone wrong, different faces flash rapidly, a silent scream on their lips.

She could have sworn she just saw the Doctor’s face flash by briefly.

That old daft face she’d only known for such a short time.

Had he been looking at her?

Maybe he won’t sound the alarm?

The creature slides right past her, oddly enough there is no breeze as it passes. Rose scrambles to her feet and creeps her way through the catacombs towards the doors on the far side of the room. More reveal themselves to her but none challenge her. She manages to get the doors open by using her sonic screwdriver, the one the TARDIS had made for her long ago. Rose thought she’d never find it, not after the Master hid it from her just to spite her but a week ago she found it oddly enough in his sock drawer.

He was clearly bad at hiding things of important value.

The doors pop open and Rose slides in between them, the heavy metal grating loudly as she pushes them aside.

Ok…now she understood what Missy was talking about.

“Bigger on the inside alright…” Rose muses allowed, her gaze upon the high vaulted ceilings, the endless rows of odds and ends and the curious metal vaults lining every row. Rose weaves her way through, following the path that Missy outlined for her. Three steps forward, two to the left, one hallway, four turns and stop two steps from the right next to the big silver box labelled in Gallifreyan glyphs.

Lucky for her, the Master had taught her a bit of Gallifreyan.

Pulling open the box there she finds a line of odd looking glass cubes which contained tiny black cylindrical orbs. “ _More_ metal balls...” Rose remarks idly, “she’s certainly got a fixation for them.” She picks one up and shuts the door, eyeing her prize curiously. It flashes with tiny red lights, hovering just above the surface of the box on the inside. “Bigger on the inside…” she murmurs to herself with a tiny smile. “ _Very_ tech.”

Making her way back was easier than finding her way in.

She reaches the doors with relative ease, relieved that she’d made it. Something gives her pause though, a soft lull of sound somewhere behind her. It’s the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard, a sort of singing that sooths her and makes her _burn_ all at once.

It was calling her.

Rose was rooted to the spot as she listened, every fiber of her being longed to follow that sound but Missy’s warning echoed in her mind.

_Don’t listen to the voices._

It takes all her strength to turn away and walk back out into the catacombs, the music behind her was getting louder and louder, ringing in her ears, inside her head, all around her like she were sitting front row at a symphony.

She hadn’t realized that the sliders had scattered, cowering in the darkest corners as she passed until she noticed her hands were glowing.

Every inch of her radiated light and music.

“Oh fuck…” Rose blurts out in a panic, “Stop that—stop that _right now_!”

Deep breaths…deep breaths…

Then finally, the glowing began to fade. If it responded to emotion then she had to calm down.

 _“…Mine…so leave off her.”_ Missy’s voice shakes her from her panic, focusing her thoughts on something else. A peculiar conversation beyond the outer doors of the catacombs.

Another voice, very familiar replies, “You know she’ll never be safe with you.”

“A lot safer then with you,” Missy replies coolly, “I thought I’d killed you.”

“Funny,” the voice sniffs casually, “I thought the same of _you_. Turns out we’re both wrong.”

“Do you think she’ll go with you when she finds out what you did?” Missy says tersely, “think she’ll just throw herself at you?”

“Imagine what she’ll think when she finds out what _you_ did,” that same voice replies, a voice that still haunts her dreams at night.

“I did what I had to,” Missy replies hotly, “I do what I must to _win_ …my heart does not _bleed_ for humanity like yours…I would do whatever needed to be done—it makes me a better match.”

“You orchestrated this _whole thing_ ,” the Valeyard tells her coolly. Rose can see him now as she reaches the doors, peering cautiously around the edge to see them better. “You’ve been manipulating her from the beginning.”

“I’m not the one _scheming_ ,” Missy snarls, there is something different in her behavior now, all trace of playful madness has drained away and left only a woman with cold malice burning in her eyes, malice directed all at the Valeyard.

“What were you _thinking_?” The Valeyard hisses angrily, “bringing her here? _Here_ of all places! You _know_ what’s in that room!” He stiffens suddenly, inhaling sharply and glowers at Missy, “Did you think your scent would hide her from me?” Then after a beat he says, “Hello Rose,” the Valeyard’s gaze fixed on her half-hidden face.

“What are you doing here?” Rose asks him flatly, stepping around the door as Missy turns to look at her as well, her gaze shifting between the box in her hands and her face.

“I’ve come for you of course, I told you…you’re in danger Rose… _let me help you_ ,” the Valeyard explains. He was no longer that mad, silly bloke who stole her away from the shopping mall. His demeanor was cool and serious…he almost looked…worried.

“Got it,” Rose holds up the cube for Missy to see, “Give over the bag.”

Missy proffers the purple brocade bag she’d been holding, it reminded Rose a great deal of the sort of bag Mary Poppins would carry. She takes it and carefully sets the cub inside, snapping it closed afterwards. She ignores the piles of dust and clothing, stepping over them as she walks towards the two Gallifreyans. She chooses to ignore it because she knows what happened to them, though she doesn’t know how Missy managed it just yet.

“You cut your hair,” the Valeyard comments idly, noting her chin length curls, “you once told me you’d never cut it.”

“I’ve recently had a fresh perspective,” Rose replies flatly and then looks at Missy, “find me when your done…I’m going _shopping_.” She holds up the bag as she walks past, one thing on her mind.

She needed to find a TARDIS.

 

 

                                               

* * *

 

 

 

Instead of finding a TARDIS, she finds an entire _armada_ of them. Rose stares in awe, every shape and size, even an old type forty like the Doctor’s. Rose passes them all up, looking for the parts department.

_I do what I must to win._

“Damn right…” Rose murmurs aloud, and she was going to do what she must to win as well. Methodically, she uses what little she can manage of Bad Wolf to freeze anyone who gets to close while she’s rummaging through used parts—some new—to repair the TARDIS. If she was going to be here she might as well pick up a few parts along the way. She doesn’t really know what he needs of course, as he’s locked her out of the TARDIS quite a bit.

_Manipulating her…_

Was he manipulating her? Was he lying about everything? Was he simply after Bad Wolf?

“If you’re shopping for parts I wouldn’t object to the cufflinks on the wall behind you, that console board—if you can fit it in there—and those gear knobs on the table. _Actually_ , if you could fit that whole TARDIS in the bag that would be lovely too.”

When she doesn’t respond, to furious for words Missy adds, “I also wouldn’t object to that bit of time rotor over there…those wires…a few of those temporal retractors…”

“Oi!” Rose growls angrily, “I’m not your _Mum_!”

“ _I can’t get it_ ,” she tells her, “I can’t know your bringing it to me either. I’m just making suggestions on the off chance you decide to bring me them.” Missy smiles serenely-sweet and tilts her head to one side, “don’t ignore me Rose Tyler…I don’t like being ignored.” It was then Rose realizes Missy has her back to her, staring up at the walls like there was something fascinating on them. “Lovely architecture really,” she remarks idly as she adjusts a stray lock of hair, “Oh and that wrench on the table—if you want—I’ll need that for the heating…I broke the last one if you recall.”

“This one?” Rose quirks a brow, realizing how strange this conversation has become.

“Yes, that one—Oh I don’t know dear I’m not looking…foreknowledge an all,” Missy sighs dramatically.

 

                                             

* * *

 

“You know it doesn’t really matter because you’re the future version, right?” Rose asks as they return to the TARDIS.

“It’s for _posterity_ ,” Missy tells her with a roll of her eyes, “I’m a _Time Lady_ , I can’t be caught doing naughty things like this.”

“We just stole a giant _flash drive_ from the Time Vaults for your epic birthday bash…” Rose replies dryly.

“Yes,” Missy tells her serenely as she swings the TARDIS off into flight, “and it’s going to be positively _explosive_.”

Rose glowers at her briefly before changing the topic, “So…you’ll kill him will you?”

“Yes,” Missy tells her without taking her eyes off the console, “why?”

“Because he kissed someone else—do you have a thing for him? I’m sorry I have to ask…I know you lot really don’t do romance and whatnot but… _come on_ ,” Rose stares at her curiously.

Missy regards her for a moment and then says, “Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps because my species is gender fluid it would then be safe to say that my species is also bisexual? If something like sexuality _existed_ on my planet…It would be safe to say that is what I am,” she smiles for a moment, “I believe in _equal opportunity_ you know…. mind you—those _eyebrows_!” she giggles manically, bouncing around the console at high speed, “Oh and that _accent_! You know the moment I heard it I thought—that’s _mine_! Do you like the accent? I like the accent…sounds _sexy,_ doesn’t it?”

“So…yes…you _are_ into the Doctor?” Rose stares in bewilderment. “That’s a _yes_?”

Missy groans and rolls her eyes, theatrically leaning over the console to look at her while she tap-dances a funny gig across the floor on the spot. “Rose Tyler if my people did that sort of thing….” She ponders a moment, “know what?” she grins wryly and leans closer as she utters the next few words, “ _Not telling_.”

“Then tell me about the Valeyard…what were you two arguing about?” Rose asks curiously.

“Not telling that either,” Missy sniffs.

“Foreknowledge?” Rose quirks a brow.

“Yes,” she tells her slowly.

“Yes or no…was it about me? About Bad Wolf?” Rose presses.

“Yes…” Missy grins, clearly liking this game.

“Yes, about Bad Wolf or Yes about me?” Rose frowns.

“ _Yesss_ …” Missy giggles darkly.

Rose glowers for a moment then, “Are you lying to me? Has this whole thing been a set up?”

“Oh, don’t listen to that rubbish dear,” Missy waves her off, “He’s just bolstering because we both knew you were listening and he wanted to be dramatic. He’s like that you know… _dramatic_. He’s just angry because I won and he lost and then he lost some _more_.”

“You two are quarreling over me?” Rose frowns and then suddenly comprehension dawns on her, “am I here because you two are playing a round of keep away?”

“ _Maybe_ ,” Missy says as she dances past.

“Did he do something to you?” Rose questions.

“Maybe,” Missy replies just as cryptically as ever. “Or Maybe I may or may not have done something to him _too_.”

“And you may or may not be cross with him about it?” Rose quirks a brow, “would I be cross about it?”

“Well I certainly hope so,” Missy scoffs as she looks at her, “Your my girl aren’t you? Haven’t we…. what do you humans call it… _bonded_? You and me…two _gals_ sailing across the universe…I’d certainly hope you’d be cross!”

“And…” Rose debates her next words, “did he try to kill you?”

“Yes,” Missy answers honestly, darkness creeping along the edges of her eyes as she stares at the console solemnly. “Yes, he did…and believe you me _Rose Tyler_ …he’s going to _pay_.” Missy gently pushes another lever forward, her gaze now on Rose’s face and she can clearly see the malice in her eyes, “The _bitch_ is in.”


	4. Cybermen and Birthdays Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

“Do you like pudding?” Missy asks while tugging sharply at the corset laces. Rose groans, holding one hand to her breasts as a blush flushes her cheeks. Knowing who Missy is now, it’s difficult to let her do this. Missy rolls her eyes, tugging sharply yet again, “Oh please…we’ve got the same naughty bits, don’t we?”

“That depends,” Rose says with a little wry smirk as she watches Missy in the mirror, “you two of anything else?”

“Just tongues,” Missy tells her, tying off the corset in a neat little knot. “Betcha wasn’t expecting that now we’re you?” She turns on heel and nods towards a black satin dress hanging on the rack, “That one…and the pink heels…they’re match you I think.” She taps her chin thoughtfully then adds, “and pin your hair up just so…bit of curl around your face.”

“Bossy,” Rose remarks as she snatches the dress off the rack.

“Very,” Missy smiles serenely, “I like being the boss—you’ll like it too eventually.”

“Um…” Rose starts as Missy strides off towards the console room.

“Right…” Rose heaves a sigh as she changes, “ _awkward_.”

 

 

                                   

* * *

 

They dine at an intergalactic restaurant with zero-gravity rooms. Rose wasn’t particularly keen to chase her chicken alfredo across the room but it was fun to float like they were. Missy was making a game of it, and eventually Rose found herself playing along despite everything.

Missy annoyed her.

Missy also drove her barmy, but she was far more open about things then the Master was, which is useful. So, they played twenty questions, though Rose still hesitated on the ones that nagged in the back of her mind. Missy wasn’t like the Doctor, Rose could ask her the difficult questions and she wouldn’t blush and change the subject. Missy was straightforward about things, blunt when honest and never withheld any harsh truth.

Rose liked that about her.

“Oh, _go on_ ,” Missy tells her while they eat desert, little red orbs of jello floating towards Rose every time Missy shot one her way just to be annoying, “you’ve got more questions, I can see the wheels turning in that tiny ape brain of yours.”

“You said…you um…” Rose pauses for a beat, “Well…”

“Let me guess,” Missy tells her, biting her lip in mock amusement, “I’ll make this easy for you dear---I’ll ask--- _Rose Tyler_ , have you ever _fucked_? And you’ll prattle on about how you have and your first lover was some bloke named Jimmy and then you’ll ask me all shy and mumbly— _have I ever had sex_ —and then I’ll say,” Missy pauses for dramatic effect, “ _are you asking me if I’ve ever fucked?_ I’ll tell you, _of course I have_ …over two-thousand years old…you’d think I’ve done _that_ before at least once. Purely scientific of course,” Missy sniffs lightly, “or if you prefer I can give you the lighter answer and simply say—a lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“You do realize you just carried on an entire conversation with yourself…” Rose tells her after a pause, “and…seriously—you have? I mean…I thought…well…”

“What?” Missy quirks a brow, “seriously though _yes_ …and no don’t ask me again.”

“Ok,” Rose replies after a minute. Missy just answered one of the greater mysteries about Time Lords…she seriously wasn’t going to question that answer any further.

“Drinks?” Missy asks suddenly, eyebrows raised, “a bit of a night-cap before beddy-bye, _hmmm_?”

“You sleep?” Rose blinks.

“Yes,” the amusement drops off her face, “Of course I do—I’m not a _robot_.”

“In a bed….” Rose adds for clarification, “at night…or…whenever…you know…”

“ _Yes_ ,” Missy replies with annoyance and signals the waiter, “Oi you, bring us a round!”

 

                                   

* * *

 

 

She’s in the bath for nearly an hour after dinner, Rose reclining in the warmth. Her muscles are tense and she aches from running. Rose had only one drink with Missy before she called it a night, opting never to be as drunk as she had been when Missy found her ever again. The bathroom is spacious and the tub circular, set into the floor. Rose is nearly asleep when Missy comes into the room, chattering away mid-sentence as if Rose had been listening the whole time.

“And _I_ said, _Lucy my faithful companion_ and _she_ shouted—Rose are listening to me?” Missy frowns down at her, Rose staring up at Missy with an expression of mild horror. “What?”

“I was telling you all about Lucy and you completely drifted off,” Missy sighs in exasperation, “but no bother she was boring anyways,” Missy waves her off and steps up to the mirror, combing out her long dark hair. She’s wearing a frilly lace floor length nightgown, clearly Edwardian by the looks of it.

“You just came into the room…” Rose stares at her quietly, “a room might I add is the bathroom…which I’m currently occupying… _naked_ ….in the tub.”

“Oh _hush_ ,” Missy tells her, “I’ve got all the same naughty bits, I don’t mind…anyways shut up I was talking—where was I?” Missy carries on her conversation, rambling away about someone named Lucy—who Rose is assuming was the same Lucy that the Master mentioned once long ago that involved the Valiant.

“And that mad bint…” Missy laughs, “I can’t believe her—she actually thought she could beat me… _me_!”

“Missy…” Rose says, ducking lower into the water when Missy plops down on the edge of the tub and hikes up her nightgown to stick her feet in, trailing water with her toes as she talks.

“So, she throws that ruddy vial into the loom matrix and…” she frowns, glances down at Rose and then wrinkles her nose, “Oi, a little more shampoo if you would please.”

“ _Get out_!” Rose bursts in frustration, “I’m in the _bath_!”

“So?” Missy wrinkles a brow, “why so _shy_ Rose Tyler?” Missy asks, a sudden gleam of mischief in her eyes, “is it cuse we talked about---…”

“Shut it,” Rose growls as she leans forward, “ _Out_.”

“Oh, you’re no _fun_ ,” Missy scoffs as she stands, stalking out of the room with a dramatic flair.

When Rose emerges from the bathroom Missy is sprawled on her bed, humming a tune she doesn’t recognize while flipping through a magazine, “I was thinking…I wonder if I should tone it down a bit…maybe keep my identity and secret and just spring it on him as an extra surprise—he loves surprises you know—the Doctor’s a man who _loves_ surprises.  Can you imagine the look on his face when he realizes it’s me?” Missy grins broadly, mirth in her eyes, “Oh this is going to be _grand_!”

“You have your own room you know…” Rose murmurs, dropping down onto the bed beside her.

“Oh but I want to sleep here dear,” Missy tells her laying on her side to watch her, “You don’t smell nearly as bad as earlier if that’s what you’re worried about.” When Rose says nothing, her grin broadens, “Oh look at you…so shy. I’ve not seen that look on your face in I don’t know _how_ long. “Is it because you asked me if I’d ever fucked anyone?”

“Seriously,” Rose blushes, staring up at the ceiling, “your never going to let me live that down are you?—Hang on…you asked that not me!”

“Oh, but you _wanted_ to ask me,” Missy grins knowingly, “You were always so timid right at the beginning—I remember.”

“Still timid,” Rose murmurs awkwardly, “It’s not often somebody just blurts out their sex life to you…”

“Oh, I’m not just somebody dear,” Missy sighs as she turns over, shutting off the bedside lamp and plunging the room into darkness, “I’m _me_ —and that’s important. You’ve got your pheromones all a flutter just by me saying the word _fuck_. Maybe I should write my other half a letter and tell him to follow you around saying that— _fuck_. It’d be _funny_.”

“Would you please shut the _fuck_ up?” Rose growls but there’s amusement in her eyes. “Some of us are trying to actually sleep.”

Silence and then…

“ _Fuck_ ,” Missy giggles and Rose groans and then suddenly there’s an undignified squeal when a certain Time Lady gets hit in the face with a pillow. “ _Oh_ , there they go again!” Missy howls in amusement. “All a flutter, you really like it when I say that don’t you?”

They don’t sleep till the small hours of the morning, when Missy _finally_ falls asleep and Rose _finally_ gets to sleep.

 

                                   

* * *

 

 

They land gently back on the planet where Missy found her late the next afternoon. Rose picks up the brocade bag full of TARDIS parts and glances at Missy, “So….” Rose asks tentatively.

“Well,” she stares at her flatly and nods towards the door, “ _Get out_ —I’ve got a birthday to plan and you’ve got a TARDIS to fix—well—I’ve got a TARDIS to fix and you’ve got me to annoy so yeah…” she smiles and then it fades, glances at the door and then at her, “you’re not moving—why aren’t you moving?”

“I’m _going_ ,” Rose sticks her tongue out—which Missy returns—and steps out into the bright afternoon sunlight, shutting the TARDIS door behind her as she goes. The TARDIS disappears almost instantly the moment the door shuts behind her. Rose watches it go before heading back to her own TARDIS.

Inside she finds the master sitting at the console, carefully balancing a wrench on its end. Rose watches for a moment and then clears her throat. “Hey…I’m back.”

“So I’ve noticed,” he remarks casually with a glance in her direction, “Your hair is shorter…how long have you been gone?”

“What?” Rose blinks.

“Your hair…you’ve cut it…and your wearing my dress…and if I’m not mistaken that’s my corset under it. I don’t want to know where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing—foreknowledge is dangerous—I’m merely wondering how long you’ve been gone.”

“Dunno,” Rose shrugs, “lost track of time I guess.”

“In a time machine,” the Master replies skeptically, “you lost track of time…in a _time machine_?”

“Went shopping,” Rose tells him, “brought you a few things.”

“Oh?” he quirks a brow and notes the bag in her hand, “That’ll be the big one…you must have brought me quite a few _things_.” Rose hands him the bag and he pops it open, digs around for a few minutes and then looks at her, “You couldn’t have just brought me the whole TARDIS?”

“Wouldn’t fit,” Rose tells him with a shrug and a grin.

“This’ll do,” he says as he sets the bag aside, “go change—I don’t want stains on that dress, it’s one of my better ones. I’ll need your help with the repairs.”

“Ok,” Rose says, starting towards her room to change.

“You look nice in that,” he says after a beat, “I mean…of course I’m sure I helped…a lot…. you smell half-way decent too.”

“Thanks…” Rose replies slowly, “I think.”

“Need help out of the corset?” he calls as she goes.

“I’ll manage,” Rose replies, thinking of the awkward moments she’s already shared with Missy.

“Don’t you dare rip it Rose Tyler,” he calls in reply, “it’s _vintage_!”

Rose laughs because she can’t help it. Travelling with this man was an adventure, and everyday something new happened, and he never stopped surprising her. Eventually she would have questions though, questions about the Valeyard, questions about Missy—not that she could directly ask him those—but other questions too.

“Rose Tyler…” The Master calls suddenly as she reaches her room, his voice crackling over the intercom.

“What?” Rose asks, glancing up at the camera curiously.

“Why has the word _fuck_ just appeared on my monitor?” the Master asks curiously.

Rose Tyler laughs.

 


	5. Planet 878 Or That One Time The Master Got Rose A Dalek For Her Birthday Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

“My name’s Rose Tyler,” she says steadily, her gaze on the camera screen before her. Her face fills the screen, warm brown eyes gazing solemnly up at the viewer. She looks around her room, then back at the screen as she rubs her face wearily. “I’m thirty-four today…. it’s been a year and…” she pauses for a moment, counting the days, “twelve days since I last saw my Mum…my family….Earth…” she trails off for a beat then, “he told me I should do this and I for the record…think this is stupid but I can’t keep a journal and I just….need someone to talk to...he doesn’t understand. He’s used to this kind of life and I’m not. When I travelled with the Doctor I could go back to Earth whenever I wanted, but this?” Rose drops her head on the table and sighs heavily. Then the camera picks up her muffled voice, “I wonder if this is what he felt like—the Doctor. Not being able to ever go home…. I miss the wind….the ocean….the trees….sunshine…the sound of my Mum’s voice…Tony’s smile…” she looks up at the camera sadly, “I miss home.”

“Rose!” Another voice in the background as a tall man with blond hair passes by the camera, standing in the doorway of her room, “I can’t find my razor.”

“Did ya try looking in your bathroom cabinet?” Rose replies, glancing back at him. He’s standing there with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist—this was becoming normal---they’ve become comfortable with each other.

“Yes,” he says, wielding a toothbrush in his left hand as he looks at her, “I can’t find them.”

“I’m comin’,” Rose tells him and looks back at the camera with a look of weary resignation before shutting it off, the screen going dark.

 

                                             

* * *

 

 

 

“See—cabinet,” Rose proffers the packaged razor with a look of exasperation. He’s brushing his teeth while he watches her, claiming the razor from her with his free hand.

“Are you eyeing me up Rose Tyler?” The Master asks her cheekily, “I’m old fashioned I’ll have you know.”

“ _No_ ,” Rose pulls a face—ok maybe a little, he’s rather nicely built.

“You humans,” he rolls his eyes with a sigh as he turns towards the mirror, tipping his chin up to look at the fresh growth of hair along his neck. “All you ever think about is sex.”

“Are you growing a beard?” Rose asks after a beat, noting the thickness of hair along his cheeks and chin.

“Yes,” he says in reply.

“I like it,” Rose says after a beat.

Rose turns and walks out then, leaving him to complete his other ablutions in private. She makes them breakfast, using odds and ends from different planets they’ve landed on to make something decently edible. Rose pours him tea and makes it just the way he likes it, setting the cup down on the table as she sits down to eat and he strides into the room, adjusting his tie. They eat together in silence because they don’t mind it. They have become comfortable enough with one another that they can sit together like this.

“It’s your birthday,” he says after a beat.

“Yeah,” Rose tells him, idly pushing food around on her plate.

She is surprised when a TARDIS blue package is set before her. The wrapping is familiar, and she just stares at it and then at him, “Where’d you get that?”

“Had it with me for a while,” he shrugs, sipping his tea, “hoped maybe he’d have given you something useful.”

Rose stares at the package the Valeyard had left for her on Christmas nearly a year and a half ago. A gift she never opened, a gift she’d completely forgotten about.

“Open it,” the Master says, quirking a brow, “you never know—might be something _fun_.”

Rose frowns and stares before standing with her plate, dumping the contents off into the garbage before setting the plate in the sink. “I cooked—you do the washing.” She then snatches up the gift on the table and her mug of tea and departs before the Master can protest.

 

                                             

* * *

 

 

In the console room, she stares at the gift solemnly. At first, she contemplates tossing it out the front door and into the wide expanse of space. Then she growls irritably and rips it open with a little savageness, mostly anger directed towards the annoying Time Lord in question. Inside is a simple black box, and inside that she finds a phone.

“ _What_?” Rose blurts out as she stares, “a phone— _really_?”

It was a posh looking smartphone that when turned on, glowing brightly and gave a bit of a gig before the screen clears and she starts sorting through the contacts. Only one number comes up and she glowers at it, punching it in. If he thought he was going to get a pleasant phone call he had another thing coming. It starts ringing and she almost hangs up, she doesn’t want to hear his voice or see his face. Yet she does oddly enough, because she’s lonely and she misses home. The Master is good company but there are moments when both need their privacy and she’d really love to have someone else around to talk to at times.

“Hello?” A thick Scottish bur rings over the phone, an older man Rose estimates. Rose just stares at the phone and hears that same voice say again, “Hello? Who is this?”

She hurtles the phone across the room and watches it fall and slide across the floor.

So _that’s_ what Missy meant by _his_ Scottish accent.

“Bad connection?” the Master remarks casually as he walks into the console room, “I hardly think tossing the phone about is going to improve that.”

“It was him,” Rose blurts out, “I don’t know how…but that was _him_!”

“What?” The Master asks curiously, “Who?”

“ _The Doctor_!” Rose all but shouts.

“Well alright!” The Master winces at her shouting, “no need to _shout_ —why’d you ring him up for?”

“I _didn’t_!” Rose hisses, “how is that even possible? We’re in a different universe!”

“Gallifrey I imagine,” the Master sniffs as he sits down on the pilot’s seat, “lots of things are possible now with that planet back in orbit.”

“But what if he finds us?” Rose asks, “I mean…can he track us now?”

“Did he know it was _you_?” the Master quirks a brow, “I don’t recall you uttering a single word save for tossing that thing across the room.”

“Well, _no_ but…” Rose watches the Master stand and set his cup aside before retrieving the phone. “Here—let’s solve the problem, shall we?” She watches him yank open the door and start to throw it out, Rose lunging forward to catch his arm.

“No _wait_!” Rose blurts out quickly, “It’s a nice phone—I’d rather not get rid of it.”

The Master rolls his eyes and freezes when the phone starts to ring in his hand. Shutting the door again they both stare at the ringing phone.

“Well I’m not answering it,” Rose tells him pointedly.

“Neither am I,” the Master replies and then promptly tosses the phone onto the pilot’s seat. “Let it ring.”

 

                                 

* * *

 

“We landing?” Rose asks, tucking her hands into her pockets as the TARDIS rocks and sways.

“Yes,” the Master replies, “I haven’t got the navigation quiet right yet…she’s still a bit off—let’s see where we are shall we?” He walks around the console, swinging on his overcoat as he goes and pulls open the TARDIS door, stepping out. Rose follows and almost immediately walks right into him.

“Oi!” Rose scowls into his back, “Whatcha stop for?”

“We seem to be in a cupboard,” the Master says casually, “hold on—let me get the door open.” When he pops open the door, he steps out and as Rose makes to follow, but abruptly he all but shoves her back inside and shuts the door behind him. Now they were pinned inside, the TARDIS doors were closed, pressed up against her back and the Master was pressed up against her front.

“Um..” Rose says softly, “What’s wrong?”

“ _Daleks_ …” the Master says quietly, “ _shut it_ …they’ll hear us.”

They listen in silence, Rose pressed so close to him she could smell the scent of clean linen and musk and time…. she’d never been this close to him before, it was different. Then something bumps into the cupboard door with a resounding bang, and then moves on, a funny grating noise as whatever it is drags alongside the wall. “ _Drunk_ Daleks?” Rose remarks dryly, “They have’n a party out there?”

“I don’t know where we are,” he says after a beat, “this place shouldn’t be here….it shouldn’t exist and yet it does---I thought there weren’t any Daleks in this universe.”

“That’s a first,” Rose says quietly, “you not knowing something.” Then after a  pause she asks, “Can we go out now?”

“I can’t move,” the Master admits reluctantly, “It’s a bit cramped in here.”

“Hang on,” Rose tells him and takes a deep breath before reaching around him for the door handle. She’s trying very hard to ignore the fact that her chin is just brushing the edge of his shoulder and she can feel his breath on her neck.

“You smell decent,” he murmurs quietly.

“You smell decent too,” Rose replies cheekily as she pushes the cupboard door open gently.

They step out into the dim light of a steel room, high vaulted ceilings with no visible windows. The smell of decay is strong here, and the floor is sticky and covered with debris.

“We’re underground,” the Master tells her quietly, hovering just behind her, “smells foul down here…coppery…. tastes like…” he touches his index finger to his tongue and then makes a face as he says, “Dalek.”

“This place is _wrecked_ ,” Rose remarks quietly, “looks like they had _one hell of a party_ down here.”

“Rose,” the Master says quietly as they explore, “you brought your screwdriver yes?”

“Yes,” Rose pats the back pocket of her jeans, “you?”

“Always,” he says with a flash of gold as he pulls it from his coat to examine the walls. “Go scan the computers over there—I want to know where we are.”

It takes her a couple of minutes to get anything working, and in typical fashion the screens are blurry and caked with filth. “No life-forms…no activity save for a few several hundred Daleks…”

“Hello!” chirps a voice happily over the intercom.

Rose and the Master straighten simultaneously, their gaze on the speaker above them. “Hello?” Rose replies tentatively, “who’s there?”

“Hi there,” the voice says again, “Oswin Oswald, Starship Intergalactic. Are you the response team?”

“Response team?” Rose asks, quirking a brow. Her gaze catches the camera that’s watching them and she nods towards it, catching the Master’s gaze as she does.

“Yes,” Oswin says, “Response team…as in the response team for the distress call issued when my ship went down.”

“Where are you?” The Master suddenly asks, turning in a circle, “I see the cameras—live feed—so where are you right now?”

“Level four—I’m quite a way down. You’re in the reception area,” she replies evenly, “Hold on let me get the door for you.”

Behind them, a door suddenly creaks open, sliding upwards into the ceiling.

“There you are…are you coming to get me?” she asks hopefully.

“Um—yeah,” Rose replies after a pause, “Of course…I’m gonna need some directions though.”

“Sure thing,” Oswin replies just as quickly.

“Where are we?” the Master cuts in, “and how did you get all the way down to level four?”

“Don’t remember—you’re on planet 878, it’s a restricted zone but now I see why. We crashed…I climbed down here and got stuck—Daleks—I’m sure you’ve noticed. This place just isn’t any planet though,” Oswin explains as she works a route for them to follow, “it’s a Dalek Asylum.”

The Master inhales sharply and clamps a hand down on Roses arm.

“Sending a map of the Asylum to that screen just behind you,” Oswin announces cheerfully.

“We need to leave, now.” The Master tells her quietly, “ _Right now_.”

“Not without Oswin,” Rose murmurs in response, “If you scared go hide in the TARDIS.”

“I’m not _scared_ \--…” he cuts off sharply and inhales to settle his anger before he shouts at her and attracts every Dalek in the Asylum right to them.

“Then put your put your Time Lord pants on and help me,” Rose murmurs in response.

“I told you,” he hisses near her ear, “I don’t wear any.”

Rose closes her eyes for a moment and inhales before responding, “ _Again_ …we need to work on your concept of metaphors…it was a _metaphor_ —I’m telling you to _sack up_ and help me….and doesn’t it bother you going commando? Most blokes can’t stand the feel of all that freedom.”

He opts to ignore her remark and look at the screen instead, memorizing it in seconds, “Let’s move—and don’t ever say I don’t do anything for you Rose Tyler.”

“Oh,” Rose says as they head out, “I’m _Rose Tyler,_ again am I?”

“You never stopped being,” he snaps back, his mood darkening. He doesn’t like this one bit, and he thinks it’s completely insane to go prancing off into a Dalek Asylum to save _one human_.

Rose simply opts not to point out to him that he’s been calling her _Rose_ for months now. She understood that names were formality on his planet and using her full name was the way he’d address an acquaintance…perhaps he saw her as something more now? Perhaps they’ve lived together long enough that he feels comfortable calling her Rose?

Or maybe he’s _finally_ tired of using her full name every time he talks to her.

 

                                   

* * *

 

 

“It’s my birthday,” Rose sniffs as they walk, “Be nice.”

“If you wanted a Dalek for your birthday I would have gladly dumped you off on Skaro and been on my way,” the Master replies tersely, “Had I realized your tendency towards dangerous heroics—much like the Doctor I might add, I would have never let you out the bloody door of the TARDIS.”

“Oh this’ll be fun,” Rose tells him, “You and me…killing Daleks…blowing up a planet.”

“Blowing up a---…” he stops and looks at her, “ _You want to blow the planet up_?”

“It’s a Dalek Asylum full of mad Daleks…of course I want it gone,” she answers him honestly, “What if they got out? There’s nothing stopping them from leaving.”

“Actually,” Oswin chimes in above them, “There is…this planet is self-maintaining…. which I also meant to point out, neither of you are wearing bracelets.”

“Bracelets?” Rose frowns worriedly.

“To keep the nano bots from converting you…” Oswin trails off, “Oh bugger I should have mentioned that, sooner shouldn’t I?”

Rose looks worriedly at the Master, “Now _what_? Am I going to turn into a _Dalek_!?”

“No,” the Master replies, fiddling with his screwdriver, “Your Bad Wolf and I’m a Time Lord—we’ll be fine.”

“You knew?” Rose narrows her eyes at him, “and you didn’t tell me?”

“I knew the moment I tasted them in the air, yes,” he answers honestly as he looks at her. “But they weren’t a danger to either of us so I didn’t see why I should bother telling you.”

“Gimme a sec,” Oswin says casually over the intercom, “so you two are a nice couple—got lost on the way back? You don’t look like a rescue team.”

“Not a couple,” Rose replies evenly, looking for a switch to release the door before them.

“Hold on—almost got it,” Oswin announces, “and I’m with her on blowing up the planet if you like—I can help you do that too.”

“How is it your managing to get into the computer system?” the Master asks, frowning up at the camera, “Daleks are geniuses and I hardly think some primitive little ape brain is going to crack the code.”

“Genius me,” Oswin tells him, “and I’ve been here a long time—hold on…you’ve got trouble headed your way. Couple of Daleks but there not active—you might be able to sneak past them.”

“How come you weren’t converted?” Rose asks suddenly, something occurring to her.

“Told you,” Oswin beams brightly, “I’m a genius—found a way to keep out the nano technology…I’m shielded in here.”

The door lifts and they creep side by side down a dark and badly lit hallway. The corridors are silent save for the echoing cries of Daleks in the distance, the odd sound of crackling electricity above them and the noise of the door ahead of them sliding upwards as they approach it.

“What’s your name by the way?” Oswin asks as they go.

“Rose,” she replies softly, “and he’s the Master.”

“Wow,” Oswin says after a beat, “looking at the files they’ve got on him—you are a _naughty_ boy.”

“Thank you,” he replies smugly and Rose rolls her eyes.

“How are you looking at the files?” Rose asks, bits and pieces starting to form in her mind, the wheels in her head spinning.

“Hive mind—Daleks have a hive mind and I’ve managed to get a way in…lots of stuff in here…. they’re a mad lot. Lot of things on Time Lords too…”

“I bet,” the Master scowls darkly.

“So, if you’re not a couple is he dating anyone?” Oswin suddenly asks and Rose’s mouth drops open in shock while the Master makes a face and glances up at the camera oddly. Oswin laughs, “Just making conversation.”

“Look up _Time Lord_ and you’ll have your answer,” Rose tells her as they walk.

“Ah,” Oswin says and falls silent.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” The Master asks quietly as they reach the next door.

“What? —About sex? Sure…. I’d love a round if you’re up to it,” Rose can’t help but giggle at the look on his face. “You _know_ you had that coming…you set yourself up for it.” He was relentless in his teasing about her being human and how humans thought about nothing but sex. It was about time she got back at him, what a convenient way to do it.

“How do you know I wasn’t thinking that?” he quirks a brow and he’s suddenly very close. Roses eyes widen and she takes a step back but he follows, filling her space. She’d only been teasing, she hadn’t realized…

Her heart was racing a mile a minute and she could smell him, fresh and clean and musk, the touch of time and stardust on his skin. His skin was cool but the tips of his fingers trailing along her cheek were anything but.

 He was going to kiss her.

This was different, she hadn’t expected this from him…he was always so cold and distant with her. He doesn’t like humans, always rants about how filthy they are, has never so much as given a hint of interest in her and then suddenly _this_. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted him to kiss her though. It was one of those moments that she could feel how close he was and it made her ache in ways she hasn’t ached for a man in a long time. The Master was very much a man in every sense, Rose knew that without a doubt. How long had she been attracted to him? She hadn’t even noticed it happening. Since when did those sharp brown eyes draw her in and keep her close? Why can’t she stop thinking about him suddenly? She was getting hot and uncomfortable by the minute and when her back presses against the wall and the Master pins her there, one hand against the wall beside her head and the other touching her cheek…Rose can scarcely breath.

 “ _Rose_ …” he murmurs ever so softly near her ear, his lips brushing against her skin ever so slightly, and Rose closes her eyes because it’s instinct and it would be awkward if she didn’t. Then as she waits for that moment to come because surely it must, what he says next is like dumping a bucket of ice water over her head. “You are a complete _numpty_.”

“ _Ooook_ ,” Oswin suddenly cuts in, “Can you two um…hold off on the preemptive celebratory shagging until _after_ I’ve been rescued?”

“Wanker,” Rose smacks him on the arm as he laughs and she turns and stalks off towards the next door. Rose won’t let him know she’s disappointed, she refuses to do that. She plays it off easily, rolling her eyes at his mockery as she starts through the next door, oblivious to the sudden look of horror on his face.

“ _Stop_!” He shouts but she’s already through.

When she turns to face what he’s looking at, she scrambles backwards, nearly falling over to dive out of the way. The Dalek before her is rusty and clearly damaged. The gun lights up as it screeches _Exterminate_ , but nothing happens.

Then something does happen.

A jet of light races past her and slams into the Dalek, the creature screaming in agony as it explodes.

“Nasty things,” the Master scowls as he kicks the remains aside and turns to look at Rose, “Come along.”

“I’m having your screwdriver if you get killed in here, just so you know,” Rose tells him as she chases after him.

“Not bloody likely,” the Master scoffs.

“Oi,” Oswin chimes in, “you two are so cute.”


	6. Planet 878 Or That One Time the Master got Rose a Dalek For her Birthday Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

She isn’t quite sure how this happened.

One minute she and the Master are side by side, the next she’s alone in an empty corridor surrounding by…things.

Bodies…or something like it.

“Rose!” she can hear him shout from somewhere above her.

“I’m alright!” Rose shouts, “I’m down here!”

“Hold on,” Oswin says, “Looks like she’s fallen into one of the containment corridors…oh no,” Oswin murmurs softly, “You need to get her out of there _right now_.”

“Anything broken?” The Master inquires aloud.

“No,” Rose replies.

“head injury, foot injury…. anything _spectacularly_ crippling?”

“Not really, no,” Rose frowns up at the place where his voice echoes.

“Then get yourself out,” the Master sniffs as he moves onward, “I’ll find Oswin and we’ll meet up.”

“Not if I get there first,” Rose murmurs as she picks her way through the mine field of bodies and debris. Something was wrong about this whole thing…something was very wrong.

“Rose,” Oswin’s voice suddenly echoes in the corridor, “your bloke friend left—you need to get out of there quickly.”

“Why?” Rose asks with a worried frown curving her lips.

“Because those people…the bodies….they’re part of the security,” the finality and panic in Oswin’s voice is enough to send Rose into a full on sprint for the far end of the corridor. They were moving, she could see it in flashes as she darted by. Bizarre looking tubes bursting from skulls—eye stalks—if she wasn’t mistaken. “ _Dalek humans_?” Rose calls out as she runs, “How’s that even possible?”

“Partially converted by the nano technology in the air,” Oswin says and then adds, “Rose the door isn’t responding...gimme a bit.”

“Open it!” Rose shouts, getting steadily closer, “They’re getting up!”

“Rose—hide!” Oswin shouts frantically, “ _Hide_!”

“There’s nowhere to hide!” Rose shouts back and slams when she reaches the door. “ _Open it_!”

“Almost,” Oswin says aloud, “almost got it and---got it!”

The door lifts and Rose falls through, stumbling to regain her balance as she turns to face the oncoming creatures, the door slamming shut right before they reach her. “Close…way to close.”

“You alright?” Oswin asks after a pause.

“Yeah,” Rose replies wearily, “you know being Bad Wolf isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You’d think I could have just…sort of melted them or something.”

“Couldn’t you have? Does being Bad Wolf do that sort of thing?” Oswin asks curiously.

“I dunno,” Rose shrugs as she straightens, “I’ve never really thought about it—what it means to be Bad Wolf that is. I suppose it isn’t my first instinct to use it because I’ve spent so much of my life not using it. Hell, I didn’t even know it was there until recently.”

“Again—wow. Bad Wolf…. it’s here in the database—did you _really_ disintegrate and entire army of Daleks?”

“I dunno,” Rose replies, “don’t remember.”

“Well,” Oswin suggests casually, “Might be a way to find out.”

“Oh?” Rose quirks a brow as she walks, turning corner after corner, dodging left and right between old inactive Daleks as she weaves her way towards the little blip on the map that keeps popping up every few sectors to guide her.

“Use it to destroy the planet,” Oswin suggests, “see if you can.”

“I’ve never tried using it for more than little things,” Rose tells her, “I don’t know what it’ll do to me…or if I’d be able to stop it once I got it started.”

“Only one way to find out,” Oswin tells her cheerfully, “your bloke friend is up ahead.”

“I see him,” Rose glowers at the Time Lord who’s currently staring at a wide metal door with a look of uncertainty.

“Intensive care,” Oswin says quietly, “Mind your step.”

 

                                 

* * *

 

“Oswin thinks I should use Bad Wolf to destroy the planet,” Rose tells him casually as she approaches.

“Bad Wolf isn’t a toy Rose Tyler,” he tells her without facing her, his gaze on the door before him, “using it for cheap parlor tricks is an abuse of power.”

“You think me using it to destroy a planet is a cheap parlor trick?” Rose quirks a brow as she steps up beside him, folding her arms across her chest to look at the door as well with a feeling of weary resignation settling in the pit of her stomach, “I’m beginning to wonder what you consider an appropriate use would be.”

He only grins wickedly at her and steps forward, the door sliding upward. Rose follows him, both treading carefully through the eerily silent room. Daleks chained up in cells, babbling incoherently, sleeping or inactive…it was almost sad.

Almost.

Daleks used to be people, Rose recalls. They turned themselves into monsters out of fear, and now looks what’s become of them. She wonders what could have driven them to do this to themselves, what scared them so much they’d destroy themselves just to win.

“I’m just beyond that door,” Oswin says suddenly, very softly so as not to wake the Daleks around them. As they step forward it slides open and she follows the Master through, walking right into his back as he stops abruptly.

“Wha--…?” Rose grumbles, stepping around him to stop and stare at what he’s looking at.

“Ah…” Rose says in understanding, “Ok.”

“What’s wrong?” Oswin asks, “I’m right here—come get me out.”

“Oswin,” Rose begins slowly, “I’m not sure how to tell you this but--…”

“You’re a _Dalek_ ,” the Master tells her bluntly. He looks at Rose, irritably glowering at her, “ _I told you_ this was a waste of time.”

“I’m not a Dalek,” Oswin says suddenly, cutting into their argument, “I’m not—I’m _human_.”

“No you’re not,” the Master tells her, “you’re not a human—not anymore—you’re a Dalek…you must have been converted when you crashed here.”

“I’m _human_!” she shouts angrily, “I’m not a Dalek!”

“ _Not_ ,” the Master counters and glances at Rose, “ _Really_ not—we should leave.”

“I…am….not….a… _Dalek_!” Oswin grounds out angrily, seething now. It didn’t make sense but it did— _but it didn’t_.

She was not a Dalek…she couldn’t be….she couldn’t be….not a Dalek…not a Dalek….

“You are,” the Master sighs heavily, clearly exasperated, “think about will you? You’ve got access to everything the Daleks have…. only a _Dalek_ gets that.”

“ _I am not a Dalek_!” Oswin rails loudly.

“Master…” Rose breaths and he blinks at her—she’s never called him by that name before—and turns his gaze towards Oswin the Dalek.

“Now,” he suddenly realizes the situation, “Calm down.”

When Rose collapses beside him, he realizes what’s happened.

He looks down at her prone body, and then back at the Dalek, he knows what’s happened. Oswin the Dalek is rocking back and forth, most likely some kind of self-soothing. The chains restraining her have snapped.

“I killed her…” Oswin whispers, “I didn’t mean to…I didn’t mean to!”

“Yes, well you _did_!” the Master shouts at Oswin, “Emotion fires the gun—haven’t you learned?”

He kneels beside her, staring at the lifeless body at his feet. Rose Tyler—Bad Wolf—this girl who lived to argue with him and repeatedly went back for him, this girl who despite his reputation chose to stand at his side and believe he could do _better_ ….

“I’m sorry…” Oswin whispers brokenly, “I didn’t mean to…”

“Shut up,” the Master scowls at her darkly before swinging Rose up into his arms. “You’re lucky I don’t kill you—but don’t worry—I’m coming back.”

His little human was dead.

What now?

It shouldn’t bother him—it really shouldn’t—but it does. Maybe because she was _his_ human and some dirty _Dalek_ came along and killed her. Maybe it was because he wasn’t quite ready to give her up yet, maybe because she’d grown on him a little and he was entertained by her banter and her spunk.

She was also willing to watch cartoons with him.

“Rose Tyler,” he sighs her name softly, bends low to inhale the scent of her hair, his little human who drives him bonkers and has the nerve to argue with him…what was he going to do now? Who would he argue with? Who would rail against his wicked schemes?

“ _Master_ …” Rose suddenly murmurs and the man who carries her stiffens in surprise. “Mmm…are you going to kiss me?”

“Your _alive_ ,” the Master stares at her in shock, “You had no heartbeat…you were _dead_!”

“Guess not,” Rose laughs weakly, “I like this—you carrying me. You should just carry me everywhere from now on.”

“Not likely,” he scoffs and tilts his head to one side, “Say my name again.”

“No,” Rose grins faintly, “I didn’t say your name anyways.”

“Did to,” he argues but he’s smiling wanly, “you said it _twice_.”

“Nope,” Rose argues back.

“You really did,” Oswin chimes in from the background, “Sorry about that—killing you that is.”

“No harm, no foul,” Rose winces as her eyes blink open and she’s looking right up at the Master. “Your very comfortable you know.”

“How are you still alive?” the Master frowns, “She _shot_ you…you should be dead right now but you’re not.”

“I pulled a _Jack_ ,” Rose nods knowingly, “lucky me.”

“Yes, you did,” he wrinkles his nose at the memory of Jack Harkness, “I want to do a few tests…see how you managed this.”

“Oh, you’re _so_ romantic,” Rose giggles, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“If you think this is romantic just wait till we get back to the TARDIS,” he tells her as he turns and walks, “I’ll sweep you right off your feet.”

 

                                             

* * *

 

“Ow,” Rose scowls at the Master as he prods her yet again with a needle.

“Stop whining,” he tells her as he removes the needle and drops a spot of blood onto a glass plate before sliding it beneath a microscope. “Your all better now—no need to be coddled anymore.”

“I’m not looking to be coddled,” Rose tells him, “I’m just tired of being poked and prodded.”

“Your lucky,” he tells her, gazing into the microscope, “I almost didn’t let you keep her.”

“Best birthday present ever,” she tells him pointedly.

“Oh believe me, I could have done better—I’ll remember for next time,” he says and falls silent, squinting at the results in the microscope. After a beat, he swivels in his chair to look at her. “Shirt off—I want to look at the wound.”

Rose makes a face but yanks it off over her head, opting to ignore the flutter of nervousness in her stomach. She wears a lacy lavender bra and nothing more beneath her shirt. His fingers are cool over the spot just between her breasts, sliding over smooth pale flesh where the wound had once been. His gaze is purely scientific, there was nothing lewd in his behavior. Then he turns away and stares into the microscope again.

“How do you feel?” he asks as he works.

“Fine,” Rose tells him, “It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

“It’s completely healed,” he tells her, “I can’t find a trace of damage anywhere. Bad Wolf is sustaining you…healing your injuries—however,” he pauses as he swivels around to look at her, “I don’t think it could sustain you permanently. I think perhaps you could use it in bits and pieces but not for prolonged use before it killed you.”

“So…” Rose quirks a brow.

“So,” he tells her, “if you plan on destroying any planets you ought to do it _quickly_.” He taps her on the nose and nods to her shirt, “You can get dressed now.”

“When’s your birthday?” Rose asks suddenly as she pulls on her shirt.

“Not telling,” he replies.

“I’m thirty-four,” she says, “how old are you?”

“Somewhere in the two-thousands I think—lost count,” he tells her and then after a beat adds, “Rose…I think your life-span is considerably increased but it’s like I said…the rules still apply. I don’t know how long Bad Wolf will sustain you. Your DNA isn’t entirely human anymore. Your people have two strands and mine have three…which is what you have now. That third strand is made up of the basics of DNA amongst my kind save for a few bits here and there that are made up of pure chronon energy.”

“So I’ve got bits of the Doctor floating around in me?” Rose asks with a funny look on her face.

“Yes,” he wrinkles his nose in disgust, “you do.”

“Lovely,” Rose sighs as she slides off the table and to her feet, “Can we blow up the planet now?”

“Yes,” he says as he stands, “if you insist.”

 

                                             

* * *

 

 

“Re-routing the self-destruct,” Oswin announces while Rose and the Master hover at the door of the TARDIS, staring down from space at the planet below. “Going to be rather huge—we may want to get out of here.”

“Shield’ll hold,” the Master waves her off, “Just do it.”

Even as he’s talking, Rose is slipping off a glove from her hand and stretching it outward, watching the tiny gold wisps of light float around her hand, “I figured it’d be just like before….if I just let go…stop trying to hold onto it…” The Master stiffens beside her, visibly keeping space between them. “If I just push outward…” Rose exhales sharply at the pain in her head, the burning ache in her hand as gold light creeps out into space like vines, weaving it’s way down to the planet. “Blimey…” Rose gasps, gold light creeping into her eyes, “I can see everything…all of it…it’s so beautiful….the whole of time and space…”

“Rose stop,” the Master says suddenly, “stop _now_ , you remember what I said.”

“Imagine what I could do with it,” Rose tells him, “the things I could do…”

“Believe me,” the Master tells her, “I’ve been imagining…now bring it back.”

The planet below them is starting to collapse wherever the light touches, caving in on itself.

“Got it,” Oswin says and without ceremony, the planet erupts with a thunderous boom, the brilliant light blinding them briefly. Rose stumbles back and Bad Wolf fades, her heart racing and her breathing heavy.

“Rose!” the Master catches her, careful not to touch her hands. Bad Wolf couldn’t hurt him technically, he had a piece of the vortex in his head too.

“I want to do it again,” Rose tells him suddenly, “the way it felt….it was so…I could anything…I’ve never felt freer in my whole life!”

“Stop it,” the Master teases as he helps her stand, “you’ll make me jealous.”

“Let me show you,” Rose tells him, holding out her hands, “I’m hardly skilled in telepathy…you’ll have to help.”

He frowns at her hands and then looks at her, “you want me in your head—you’ll let me?”

“Yes,” Rose says, “I have to show someone…you have to _see_.”

“Rose,” the Master says tentatively as her warm fingers touch his temples. He wasn’t used to this kind of contact—on his planet this considered rather…intimate. She’d see into his head and he’d see hers. “Bad Wolf is not a toy---you have to be careful.”

“Let me show you,” Rose tells him almost desperately, she was all but bursting to share it with someone.

He doesn’t have much time to respond before they both gasp, his fingers pressing against her temples in response. He isn’t one to say _no_ to an adventure like this, a chance to see into her mind, to see what she sees. It takes him a minute to sort through her surface thoughts—mostly crowded with human concerns—and find Rose beneath it all. All it takes is a little push to switch on her telepathy, or at least open it up completely so that they could communicate properly. He thinks he’ll leave it on just for fun, just to see how she handles it. It would be nice to be able to talk to her without having to shout over the intercom every time he can’t find something. This connection will create a link between them, a link that has to be maintained by a link nonetheless.

Then he sees it, burning gold light, every star in the universe, ever planet and every time line, and it’s so much _power_. So much power it steals his breath away and excites him in a way he’s not felt in so long.

Nobody should have this kind of power—and he can’t honestly believe he’s thinking that right now.

 “Isn’t it amazing?” Rose’s voice echoes around him, “I could do anything I wanted.”

“Rules,” he tells her as he watches, “Rules…don’t forget.”

“Fuck the rules,” Rose says suddenly, “I could fix everything.”

“ _No_ ,” he says sharply, pointedly. “No, you _can’t_ —and believe me—this isn’t something you’d usually here from the likes of me.

“That’s my Mum,” Rose murmurs suddenly, and he realizes they’ve drifted away from Bad Wolf and wandered into her memories.

“Dirty,” he comments idly when they pass a rather clandestine scene between her and the Valeyard.

“Get out of those,” Rose scolds him lightly.

“You’re the one whose bombarding me with pheromones,” he scoffs indignantly.

“I wasn’t,” Rose frowns.

“You were,” he says, “and I only responded to give you a good dose of your own medicine.”

“Hold on,” Rose says, her voice right near his ear now, “Hold on…back on the planet…when I suddenly couldn’t keep my hands off you…”

“My pheromones,” he tells her, “I can manufacture them at will—apparently, you like them.”

“Oh, come on,” Rose snorts indignantly, “it’s just been a while.”

“Humans,” he rolls his eyes, “always thinking about sex.”

“Ok,” Rose tells him, “Out—out of my head—hold on, what’s that?”

“Get out of there!” the Master blurts suddenly, slamming the door shut.

Rose winces sharply at the sudden closure, “who was that? She’s beautiful.”

“She’s dead—it’s not important,” he murmurs quietly.

“Who was she?” Rose asks curiously, “you loved her—I could see it in your thoughts.”

“I didn’t _love_ her,” he sneers at her, sharply shoving her out of his mind.

Rose blinks and she’s back in the console room, swaying slightly. She catches herself on the railing as she watches the Master storm off out of the room without another word.

“He’s a bit sensitive, isn’t he?” Oswin comments idly.

Rose watches him go with a frown on her lips, and then glances at Oswin with an apologetic smile on her lips, “Welcome to the TARDIS.”

 

                                           

* * *

 

“Diary—I don’t even know when,” Rose murmurs into the camera screen, “Rough day today…got shot.”

“Sorry about that,” A Dalek rolls past the screen behind her, blue eye stalk glowing in the dim light.

“That’s Oswin,” she tells the camera, “she’s my friend—she’s also Dalek.”

“Rose,” Oswin says from somewhere behind her, “he’s done something to my arm—I can’t pick anything up.”

Rose glances back, a half-smile curving her lips as she shakes her head and rolls her eyes, “He’s replaced your arm with a toilet plunger.”

“Wanker,” Oswin grumbles, “is it always going to be like this?”

“Probably,” Rose tells him, “he doesn’t really like Daleks.”

“Nobody likes Daleks,” Oswin counters, “and I’m not a Dalek—sort of.”

“Not like any Dalek that ever lived I’d wager,” Rose grins at her and then looks back at the camera, “I’m immortal I think…or something like it. That one behind me shot me today by accident and I woke up after…I healed. I don’t know how long this will last…Bad Wolf or whatever it is…it’s keeping me alive. Bad Wolf is dangerous…this much I’ve learned. It’s addicting…it’s powerful. I’ve never felt anything like it in my life and I…I didn’t want to stop.”

“Seems like he didn’t either,” Oswin comments quietly, “he seemed pretty happy to be in your head.”

“I know,” Rose sighs as she reaches over with a look at the camera before shutting it off. “It….it felt weird with him there but I kind of liked it…I kind of felt…”

“Horny?” Oswin suggests, “a bit excited? You two looked ready to climb all over each other for a minute there.”

“And then I ruined it,” Rose heaves a sigh as she stands and strips down, changing into her pajamas, “I got nosy.”

“What did you see?” Oswin asks curiously.

“A woman,” Rose tells her honestly, “she was beautiful and he loved her I think. Loved her a lot…but he got really angry when I asked about her.”

“Definitely loved her then…and she probably hurt him,” Oswin says, “Rose…is there somewhere safe I can power down? I’m afraid to do that with the Master about…what if he does something weird to me like…spray paints my eye stalk or something?”

“Just stay here with me in my room,” Rose tells her, “it’s kind of nice having another woman to talk to.”

“Glad to be out of that miserable planet,” Oswin says, “ever so grateful by the well, did I mention?”

“Yeah,” Rose grins as she switches off the light and lays beneath the covers in her bed. “Bad Wolf scares me,” she admits quietly after a pause, “I don’t know how I could ever manage to control it. Be responsible for it…it’s too much.”

“Practice,” Oswin says after a beat, “when I first became a stewardess…it was a lot of responsibility. I was worried I’d muck it up and I did once or twice. Eventually…I got the hang of it. You’ll get it.”

“I hope so,” Rose murmurs as she closes her eyes and drifts to sleep.

 

                                               

* * *

 

 

Something wakes her in the night, she isn’t sure what. Something is different, something in the atmosphere has changed. She opens her eyes, blinking into the darkness and finds him sitting beside her on the bed. His back against the head board, his legs sprawled out before him. His eyes are closed but she doubts he’s sleeping.

“Hi,” she says softly.

“Hi,” he replies just as quietly.

“You alright?” Rose asks, quirking a brow.

“I’m fine,” he answers evenly.

“Then what is it? You don’t usually come here,” Rose says by way of explanation.

“My TARDIS,” he tells her, “I can go where I please.”

“Ok,” Rose says flatly and rolls over, turning her back to him.

“Her name was Ayla,” he says softly—so softly she almost didn’t hear it. “She was---I thought she was human. It was the first time I’d ever actually got along with a human….and I…I enjoyed her company. I wanted her to travel with me…I’d never wanted a companion before. I was always happy on my own and then here she comes…mucking it all up. Long story short, she wasn’t human, she was a Time Lady in disguise…sent by the council to spy on me. Where I thought, she’d died…she’d actually just regenerated and went off with the Doctor—figures.” He scoffs bitterly, “Of course she’d run off with _him_.” Rose listens without interruption, knows that she’s hearing something rare and fragile coming from him. He doesn’t share often like this, it’s the first time he’s told herself truly personal, something about his life. “I blew up a planet to try and bring her back….and it was all for nothing.”

“That’s rough,” Rose tells him softly, rolling back over to look at him.

“Yes,” he agrees, “but…I came here to talk about Bad Wolf…not Ayla….” He sighs and slides down the bed, laying on his side with his head propped up on his hand, “It’s clear that Bad Wolf is…dangerous. As my people before me…you should probably learn the laws of time…it’s better if you know them…better for everyone I think. You need to make judgement calls…understand what kind of threat Bad Wolf is and the laws will teach you that. They’ll keep you from making mistakes…”

“I’m scared,” Rose tells him, “I don’t want to use it anymore. I couldn’t stop myself…I couldn’t resist the way it made me feel…I felt so alive…so free…I could do anything I wanted, be anyone I wanted.”

“You can be anyone you want without it too,” he tells her, “Nobody’s stopping you.”

“Inhibitions…laws...rules…I felt like with Bad Wolf I didn’t have to care about them anymore,” Rose admits, “I could change the universe…make it what I want it to be.”

“Now I’m _really_ jealous,” he tells her playfully. “But that is…you can’t do that—even I can’t do that. I want too, don’t get me wrong…that sounds absolutely delightful and good fun but no….no we can’t.”

“Fuel and the fire--us,” Rose laughs.

“Who’d be fuel and who’d be fire?” he quirks a brow, “You seemed pretty keen to go play—nearly as much as I was.”

“Mmm,” Rose thinks for a moment, “I’d be the fire and you’d be the fuel…you’ve got all the good ideas.”

“I’m going to remind you of that every time you doubt me Rose Tyler,” he says with a grin.

They fall silent, both pondering different things for a long while. Before long Rose wrinkles her nose, something occurring to her as she lay there. She’d felt odd since he came in, but now she’s starting to realize _why_ she felt odd. “Are you secreting pheromones again?”

“Maybe,” he grins up at the ceiling, rolling onto his back. “Just curious—you seem to react to them so well.”

“Not funny,” Rose tells him, now understanding the conflicting emotions racing across her mind and body.

“Very funny,” he says, “like the word _fuck_ —you seem to give off more pheromones whenever I say that word.”

“Oh, not _this_ again,” Rose groans aloud and pulls her pillow over her face to block him out.

“Your pheromones smell like flowers…. lavender…. sunlight…” he says after a beat, “what do mine taste like?”

“I dunno,” Rose mumbles from under the pillow, “I can’t smell them…I mean I can but I…. you know what I mean.”

“Human senses,” he nods in understanding. Then he frowns, staring up at the ceiling as a question whirls in his mind. “Rose…. can I ask you something?”

“You just did,” Rose replies, pulling her head back out from under the pillow.

“Did you and the Doctor ever…” he trails off, quirking his brow. “It’s not like my people aren’t capable of it…we are…it’s just we’ve no interest. Some do I suppose…just out of curiosity…it’s been mostly weeded out of our genetics.”

“No,” Rose admits, “No we never did…I mean…” Rose shrugs, “I think maybe it occurred to us both but it never actually happened.”

“I’m a virgin,” he says suddenly, rolling onto his side to look at her, “you’re not.”

“No…” Rose stares at him, “How are you a virgin? Your over _two-thousand_ years old.”

“Not in general,” he rolls his eyes, “This body.”

“ _Lucy_ ,” Rose reminds him promptly.

“Previous regeneration,” he waves it off.

“So where are you going with this?” Rose quirks a brow.

“Can we fuck?” he asks bluntly and without relish. “Purely scientific of course…curiosity really.”

Rose stares and stares…

And stares…

“Do you want to have a good shag because the Doctor hasn’t?” Rose glowers, “I know how you are…you just want to so you can rub it in his face.”

“Maybe a little,” he says after a beat, “but…well…Bad Wolf felt….it felt…”

“I know,” Rose tells him, “believe me I know—I was there. I thought you didn’t like us smelly little apes?” Rose smirks at him teasingly, “don’t I smell awful or something?”

“Not right now,” he tells her, “I don’t think I’d care right now.”

“I’m not sleeping with you just because you want to up one on the Doctor…mind you…two tongues,” Rose grins and rolls over onto her stomach, “I’m going to bed.”

“How did _you_ know I have two tongues?” he blinks at her in surprise and then it clicks, “I don’t want to know.”

“Probably not,” Rose grins at the memory of Missy kissing her, “You’ll find out eventually I imagine—spoilers.”

“Still don’t want to know,” he sings aloud as his shirt suddenly goes sailing over her head and onto the floor.

“Why are you stripping?” Rose frowns at him, one eye open to look at him.

“Don’t sleep with clothes,” he tells her, “For your sake I’ll keep my pants on.”

“I’ve seen it all before,” Rose laughs, “You’ve no shame I tell you.”

“Oh good,” he tells her and without ceremony his pants follow his shirt.

Silence and then…

“I didn’t actually mean for you to take them off,” Rose tells him softly, “But it’s fine….why are you sleeping in here?”

“I may or may not have accidently upset the TARDIS,” he says quietly, “and I may or may not be locked out of my room at the moment.”

_Scoundrel…._

Rose bites back a grin when she hears the TARDIS humming aloud. “Wait…” she freezes, “I heard that…in words…clearly….and you…” Rose looks at him, “did you do something to me?”

“I may have opened up your telepathic abilities completely…” he admits reluctantly, “It’s easier for us to communicate like that.”

“You didn’t ask!” Rose glowers, “you should have asked!”

“You let me into your head,” he counters, “I might as well.”

Rose groans and closes her eyes, taking a breath, “you know I don’t like it when you just do things like that.”

“But it’s better like this,” he says, “look.”

He takes her hand, something he’s never done since the moment they met. Rose freezes, because on Gallifrey this is like kissing, the ultimate level of intimacy for his people and here he was, holding her hand.

She felt almost indecent doing it…like it was naughty.

“Uh—ah!” Rose is surprised by the sensation, the flood of emotions between them. His frustration with her, his amusement, his irritation with Oswin, the annoyance of the TARDIS being cross with him and…warmth…tentative and soft like tendrils of light curling around her mind. Warmth and strawberries…oh the sweet smell of strawberries, the sweet taste of him on her tongue, in her mind, the warmth of his hands on her hips, sliding up her waist…

Wait…was she kissing him?

“Blimey!” Rose breaks away, eyes widening. He was staring up at her in equal shock. Somewhere between him holding her hand she’d straddled him and decided it was a good idea to shove her tongue down his throat. “I…am… _so_ …sorry,” she scrambles off him, horrified.

“Mind touch can be…” he’s staring at her strangely now, “intense….”

“So, I’ve noticed,” Rose replies, “Maybe you ought not grab my hand until I can keep my shields up.”

“Probably a good plan,” he says, still staring at her before springing out of bed with sudden energy, “I’m going to work on the console.” He leaves before she can protest, and she dives back under the blankets with a humiliated groan.

Then something else occurs to her.

“Oi,” Rose calls after him just as the door closes, “Where’s Oswin?”

“Cupboard,” he calls back and disappears down the hall.

“Oh, _for fucks sake_ ,” Rose growls and climbs out of bed to go rescue Oswin. He must have pushed her in there while Oswin was asleep.


	7. Evolve Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

At forty, Rose Tyler looks just as she did at thirty-four. It has become a forgone conclusion that she does not age. It became noticeable even to the Master over time, who constantly calculated and cataloged everything she did and said, memorizing little details about her personality and mannerisms as any Time Lord is prone to do. The years they spent together thus far have been full of misadventure and bizarre encounters. Rose has seen more of the universe then she ever dreamed of, and the Master knows her so well he could predict her thoughts before she’d even spoken them aloud. Rose still does not hold such a degree of knowability about him, but she’s getting there. Humans don’t catalog nearly so well as Time Lords.

            It is during this time that Rose has come to terms with Bad Wolf, with accepting what she is. She’s stopped resenting it long ago, started to accept it and deal with it instead. She’s also come to accept the very real possibility that she’ll never see her family again. She hates that thought more than any other that’s occurred to her over the years, but the Master always tells her that one day, if they ever manage to find the right parts and get it sorted…. he’ll get her back to them. 

On her fiftieth birthday, they land by chance on a planet full of balloons. Balloons of every shape and size, of every color—and some she’s never seen before. People living in balloons, sailing across the skies, never touching the ground. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, and she readily shares that with him by touch of hand, ever so slightly. She is afraid of these moments with him as he is afraid of them with her. They both had an unspoken agreement that nothing would come of it. That night so long ago when she kissed him had been a moment that could never happen again. They had a connection between them, deeper than just temptation. It was unheard of for Time Lord and a human—it simply wouldn’t do. So, at first, he turned his back on her, shut her out. The Master does not run—that’s the Doctor’s job. The Master faced the problem head on and shut her out just enough to prevent such a thing from happening again.

Didn’t stop them from flirting though.

On occasion when the need arose, they’d pretend to be lovers or good friends, a recently married couple, whatever was needed. A kiss, a touch, a smile—these things were all necessities of the games and worlds they devised to baffle and confuse their opponents.

At sixty, Rose has changed her look at least twelve times by now. She’s changed her hair color, her clothes, her style, her make-up and everything in between. Now she is a brunette with dark chestnut curls—she took the idea from Missy—and wears a purple cocktail dress with a flaring skirt and black pumps. Neat and tidy—would be the way the Master describes her—and completely baffled as to her wardrobe choice but doesn’t question it. Her make-up is flawless and her hair is pinned and curled with a delicate accuracy. Rose likes to be neat and tidy—the Master’s rubbed off on her bit. When they wander the universe together, he’s usually the one being mischievous and she’s the one to sit with her legs crossed, regarding the world with a casual ease and bored flare. She’s seen this all one to many times—give her something _new_ already. So, the Master tries harder, and he finds he likes the flare of fire in her eyes when he’s done something she _really_ doesn’t like and she gets in his way to put a stop to it. He pushes her and pushes her, challenges her, keeps her entertained because when she’s bored—he’s bored—and the Master _hates_ to be bored.

At seventy, Rose tends to wander off. Sometimes it’s for a day—sometimes it’s for months.  There are days when they can’t stand looking at each other. Those are the days when one or the other wanders away. He’ll glower and yell and promise to dump her off somewhere and she’ll leave, and it might take a while but he gets bored and goes looking for her. When he finds her, sometimes she’s working as a waitress in some intergalactic restaurant where they serve funny looking purple squid and other days she’s found in some smoky faintly lit speak easy in the early twenties, drinking gin and playing cards. She’ll be sitting there with a cozy little smile on her face, the glimmer of a silver flapper dress curving her figure and she’ll beckon him over like he was a lost lover and she’d been missing him for _ages_.

            Other times, he’s the one that wanders off. Rose will sit around in the Tardis for ages, waiting for him. It wasn’t like she could leave him—she could technically—but she’d never be able to get back to where she left him if she did. She imagines the same thoughts occur to him too, if he were to leave her. So eventually she goes looking for him, and she finds him in the middle of some mad political debate or scheming up some plan to take control of city ripe with the need for a leader. He liked to lead, he liked to control things and organize and build and create. Rose has learned that about him, and for a while she stands beside him and watches and then eventually she’ll rain on his parade and make him go back to the Tardis.  She hates that about him—his sense of superiority—he thinks he’s better then every other species just because he’s Gallifreyan.

When Rose turns eighty, he gives her a lovely silver ring, a five-point star at its heart surrounded by a cluster of fiery looking stones he tells her are called wolf stones. It is said that the stones were carved from the heart of a great stone wolf on a planet long since burned away over time, and the wolf who lived there thrived on the stone. The stories whisper that the stones bring luck to the owner—or some such nonsense as the Master puts it.

He loves to ruin the moment like that.

She cherishes the gift—he’s never given her anything quite like it save for a Dalek named Oswin. Oswin who at this point is just as much a Dalek as she ever was, of course with a few minor tweaks here and there courtesy of her own genius and a few of the Master’s just to spare him the drama of listening to Oswin whine about being a Dalek.

At ninety, Rose experiences a temporary break with sanity. It is during this time she starts to understand her connection to the Master. It is in the moments when she truly thinks she’s lost him that she loses control of Bad Wolf. She becomes something else, something mad and chaotic. Rose stops caring about the universe as a whole, willing to rip it to shreds to save him. This isn’t a _good_ thing she thinks, the whole _willing-to-rip-the-universe-apart_ thing. So, when she does manage to save him that doesn’t involve her destroying the universe, he promises not to endanger himself like that again.

He is also mildly frightened of doing so, simply because he thinks Rose might _actually_ break the universe if he did.

This is also the first time they sleep together.

It’s a bizarre moment, because neither really expect it. One minute they’re standing in the Tardis trying to recover from what just happened and the next Rose is the one slamming him into the console with her tongue half way down his throat. This eventually leads them to somewhere far more private were a certain Dalek isn’t stuck witnessing it because the Master may or may not have glued part of her frame to the grating just to be annoying.

This is the one and only time Rose Tyler has ever said his name.

“ _Say it_ ,” he murmurs, shoving her down onto the bed, looming over her in the dark, “say my name.” He wouldn’t touch her till she did, he wouldn’t let her this close to him without her accepting him as he is, accepting him completely—which included his name.

She most certainly did.

* * *

 

**Now…**

 

Somewhere deep underground, Rose Tyler crept through old ruins with a torch in one hand and a Dalek in tow. They’d landed here days ago, but the Master refused to go with her so she went on her own, taking Oswin along for the ride. He wasn’t keen to go meddling especially when he could find other more entertaining things to do—namely tinker with the TARDIS. Secretly she thinks he could care less about what happened to the people who lived in these old ruins. It wasn’t his style to run about saving planets and solving mysteries, that was the Doctor’s job.

“Rose,” Oswin says hesitantly as they go, “The floor is disgusting…. how am I supposed to get through here with all this muck in the way?”

“I’ll move it,” Rose tells her, “and you’ve got burners—remember?”

“Yeah…” she says hesitantly, “don’t like using the force field to move things…feels weird.”

She and Oswin were a good team for something like this. Oswin didn’t mind a good adventure and Rose didn’t mind having a Dalek with her in case things went sideways. “You’ll manage I’m sure.” She pauses to examine the far wall, shining the light of her torch against the stone to look over the images carved into it. “Beautiful artwork…” she wrinkles her nose in concentration, reaching out into the vortex. It was like being there but not being there, caught between timelines. One minute she’s with Oswin and the next she’s alone in a brightly lit hallway, gazing up at the freshly painted stone. “Here we are…” she says and turns, looking for signs of people.

Being Bad Wolf had perks.

One of them being that she could do this, the timelines weren’t just noises in her head anymore, voices whispering across time, but vivid pictures as if she were actually there. “Odd,” she says as she walks the length of the halls, finding no one.

“Rose?” Oswin’s voice echoes overhead.

She blinks and she’s back in the dark ruins, standing right where she’d been before. “They were gone when these were still freshly painted,” Rose tells Oswin.

“Hate it when you do that you know,” Oswin tells her as they go, “You just freeze in place and you look like a statue.”

“Have to concentrate when I’m doing that,” Rose explains, “I can’t be moving about or I’ll walk into something.”

“You know what he said about you using Bad Wolf,” Oswin reminds her.

“Yes,” Rose tells her as they go, “but it’s useful—might be cheating a bit—but useful. Granted, it’s never fun when you know what’s happened before you’ve even gotten into the mischief.”

“You rely too heavily on Bad Wolf,” Oswin mutters, carefully maneuvering around a fallen chunk of stone.

“Oswin,” Rose tells her softly, “I’m a hundred and thirty-four years old, I think I’ll manage.”

“Your forgetting, again aren’t you?” Oswin sighs.

“I’ve got it up here,” Rose tells her as she taps the side of her head, “All I need to do is look at the timeline and I remember.”

As she got older, Rose began to struggle keeping track of her memories. Humans weren’t meant to live this long, and thus her human brain could not hold all the memories that came with such an extended lifespan. The solution was Bad Wolf, it was like her own personal flash drive.  All she needed to do was look at her timeline and she could find everything she needed. The Master wasn’t pleased with that idea though, and she continued her diaries to appease him. He also found her this pink orb that when touched, recorded whatever memory or thought the owner wanted.

Rose tried not to focus on some of those memories.

It was too depressing.

Her Mum, her family were all dead by now. Grown old and died, and never knew what happened to her. The Master told her once that when he gets the navigation working right, they can return moments after they left and nobody would be the wiser. Problem is, how does she explain to her Mum about her age difference? Should she even tell her?

Oswin was another thing entirely.

They offered to take her home, let her see her family when they fixed the navigation. She refused, she didn’t want to put them through that. She would be feared because of what she is now, it simply wasn’t safe. So, the Dalek stayed with them, and Oswin endured the Master’s pranks and Rose’s mad adventures.

“There are people here,” Rose stops suddenly, the sound of singing nearby. She could see flashes on their timelines, dancing behind her eyes. Over the years, she’d gotten pretty good at controlling Bad Wolf—discovered she could do things she hadn’t been capable of before. Oswin helped her along the way, the human Dalek kept Rose grounded whenever she got too reckless.

The Master kept her sane.

She needed him as much as he needed her during those times. Rose struggled with aging and he struggled with bad memories, with echoes of times gone by, and occasionally he missed his friend…he missed the Doctor.

“Down here,” Rose says, creeping around a corner, following the sound. “There’s a few of them…. three or four at least.”

“What’s that crunching?” Oswin suddenly asks, her voice a soft whisper echoing against the walls. Oswin had been tinkering with the vocal controls and managed to make herself sound relatively human. She resented the default Dalek voice, and even went out of her way to re-write some of the translations.

“Bones,” Rose frowns at the gritty pale dust at her feet, the smell of decay. The hum of broken timelines sang in these halls.

“And those?” Oswin adds, her eye-stalk turned upwards.

Rose glances up, making a disgusted face at the slimy looking sacks hanging above them, “Web sacks.”

“Spiders?” Oswin asks tentatively, trying to mask the hint of fear in her voice.

“Probably,” Rose replies, displeased with the ideas of spiders as well.

“Space spiders…” Oswin adds after a beat, “I hope there not…you don’t think they’re bigger…then Earth spiders, do you?”

“Probably bigger…” Rose tells her, “you know I’m not going to lie about it…Doctor used to tell me half-truths and look where it got me.”

As she crept along, the floor grew slick with old rotting debris and the smell of cold damp air. Until at last they came to flooded hallway, Rose staring into the inky black depths of the water ahead. “Well…I’d say that’s the end of the hallway.”

“I can’t swim,” Oswin points out, “Dalek.”

“Oh _please_ ,” Rose tells her, “you’re a submarine with _wheels_. I’ve seen Daleks bounce around out in space, I’m sure you’d be fine underwater— _I’m_ the one who needs oxygen.”

Behind them, the skittering noises grow louder, odd scratching sounds across the wall beyond. “Rose…” Oswin says worriedly.

“I hear it,” Rose replies nervously, edging around to face the noise, shining her torch in the direction of the sound. The sight of them makes her heart skip a beat, hundreds of beady eyes and long spindly legs. They creep across the walls and ceiling, along the floor, the sound of them growing louder and louder. “Oh dear.”

“Run?” Oswin asks her pointedly.

“Quite so,” Rose agrees and darts towards the mass, diverting left down a hallway just before reaching them, Oswin at her heels. Behind them there is a horrible sound, like stone against stone, and the spiders begin to scurry faster, screeching horribly. The rumbling behind them is so loud it’s near deafening as it echoes in the dark halls. “Water—that’s water!” Rose yells, “Oswin _hurry up_!”

“Bloody hell—somebody’s _flooding_ the halls!” Oswin yells aloud, narrowly dodging fallen chunks of rock and old bones as she struggles to keep up with Rose. Eventually she gives up and starts torching anything that gets in her way, her survival instinct over powering her refusal to acknowledge the bits of her that were very much Dalek. “Rose, _freeze it_!” Oswin is screaming, the crashing sound of a raging torrent just behind them.

“I _can’t_!” Rose shouts back, a hand outstretched as she reaches out with the vortex, with the burning energy of time, struggling to pause the flood of water hurdling towards them. Every attempt stops it for seconds before it’s hurdling towards them once more. She can never seem to make Bad Wolf work properly when she’s panicked, and that was very annoying. “I’m scared!” Rose shouts, “you know I can’t do that when I’m panicking!”

“Well my shields aren’t strong enough to protect you!” Oswin shouts back, “So you’d better figure it out!”

“Over here!” A woman shouts somewhere ahead of them, “Run!”

Rose glances up at her, a woman at the top of a stone stairwell. She’s sporting a green jumper and old worn jeans. Rose doesn’t question it, she just darts up the stairs after the woman whose fled down the far hall. Oswin only pauses for a moment, shouting something rude at Rose before using her boosters to get up the stairs. “ _I hate you_!” Rose hears her shout irritably.

“Just _come on_!” Rose shouts back, “I don’t fancy having to clean muck out of your undercarriage again like I did when we were on that planet full of swamps.”

Rose and Oswin dart through the same door the woman runs through, the door being slammed shut and sealed just as they pass through. There is a pause, an sudden sharp intake of breath and then four different guns are aimed at both she and Oswin.

* * *

 

“Wait!” Rose says sharply, hands outstretched in surrender, “seriously—wait. It’s not what you think.”

“That’s a Dalek!” a man towards the back snarls angrily.

“Yes,” Rose replies tentatively, “but she’s my friend….and she’s a human…” on seeing the four similar skeptical looks from those who surround her she adds, “On the _inside_.”

“My names Clara,” Oswin tells them all, “Clara Oswin Oswald…and I _am_ human.”

“ _Clara_?” Rose echoes, blinking at the Dalek beside her, “I thought your name was Oswin?”

“It _is_ Oswin,” she replies, “I hate my first name so I use my middle.”

“I don’t care what its name is,” the man towards the back hisses angrily, “it’s still a _Dalek_ —I say we kill it.” he snaps, cocking his gun.

“Easy Mike,” the woman who first called out to them says, “If it _were_ a Dalek we’d all be dead by now.”

“She’s right,” another says.

“Don’t mind him,” the woman smiles at Rose, “My name’s Yura—this is Marika, that’s John and the bloke in the back there with the big gun is Mike.”

“Nice tech,” Rose says, eyeing the gun wearily, “what’s going on here?”

“We’re archaeologists,” Marika says, “and we’re ever so slightly trapped in here—you saw the spiders, right?”

“Yeah,” Rose replies, “and the water.”

“Sorry about that,” Yura says as she motions Rose to follow, her eyes swinging around towards Mike as he storms out of the room, “we had to flood it. It was our only chance to kill them.”

“ _You_ flooded it?” Rose frowns, “You could have killed us!”

“This whole place was underwater,” Yura explains as they walk into another room where a large map is spread across a table. “We used pumps to drain out the flooded parts.” She points to the map, “We’re here…this is the main chamber. Up there is our way out and here is where they’re all gathered. Your presence made them move just for a bit—so we took the chance and flooded the halls to try and drown them…I’m sorry but we saw the opportunity and took it.”

“Nevertheless,” Rose changes the subject, “So those things….”

“Are what killed the people who lived here most likely,” Yura explains, “and now they’re trying to kill us too. How’d you get in here anyways?”

“I’ve got a…. ship of a sort that kind of…appears,” Rose tells her hesitantly.

“You’ve got a ship that just _appears_ out of nowhere?” Yura quirks a brow skeptically.  “Well where is this magic ship of yours and can you get us out of here?”

“Here,” Rose points to the map, a horrible thought occurring to her, “it was here.”

The Tardis…

The Master…

Fuck.

“Oi,” Rose yanks out her phone, the same one the Valeyard had given her long ago, “Idiot—you there?”

No answer.

She tries again and again, hoping for a response.  Oswin is just behind her, doing the same thing. Yura is walking across the room, bringing up a monitor of the hallway where the TARDIS was. If what Rose suspected was true…there were only two possibilities…one…the Tardis was underwater now, and two…

The Master left them.

One look at the screen that Yura brings up answers her question as to why she’s getting no response.

The Tardis was gone.


	8. Evolve Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

“He can’t have gone,” Oswin says, her gaze on the screen before adding, “He’d not be able to come back for us—he wouldn’t just _leave_!”

“He had to,” Rose tells her flatly, her eyes on the screen too, watching the water bubble and swirl before the lens, the occasional—and weirdly enough—spider swimming past the screen as if mocking those who tried to kill them. “The Tardis would have sensed the impending danger and the alarms would have gone off. He was forced to leave.”

“But he’s never left,” Oswin tells her, suppressing the panic bubbling up, “how are we going to get back?”

“We’ll sort it,” Rose says and turns away from the screen.

_Focus…compartmentalize…worry about it later…don’t think about it…._

Time has taught her to compartmentalize and sort worry and panic by priority. The Tardis being gone is pushed to the back of her mind and the fact there were carnivorous and apparently aquatic spiders the new problem. “Tell me everything you know about the lot who lived here.”

                                                           

                                             

* * *

 

They were called the Enali, a plentiful and vibrant species of people who populated the desert planet above them. They were always a quiet species, kept to themselves though trade was vast between them and other planets. Over the centuries, they grew quieter still though, until eventually nobody had heard from them at all. When someone came looking for them, they discovered that everybody had gone without a single reason as to why. There palaces and homes, cities and villages, were all buried by the sand. It would be centuries still till a team of archaeologists—namely those that Rose has encountered—would come here and try to sort out what happened.

“Well,” Rose says after the brief history lesson, “I know what’s happened to them—they’re out there in the corridor right now.”

“That’s not them,” Yura says, “that’s the people who came here _looking_ for them.”

“So, one day out of the blue, they all just disappeared?” Rose frowns thoughtfully, “Just gone— _poof_?”

“Yeah,” Yura says, “and that’s not even the weirdest part.”

Yura takes them deeper into the main chambers, into old rooms and caverns and council chambers. Every room is different, but these rooms were filled with odds and ends. Old toys, dolls, luggage, molded blankets laid across barren stone floors as make-shift beds. “It looks like they were hiding out…” Rose comments lightly, her fingers sliding over a broken doll on the floor near her feet.

“Probably from the spiders,” Yura tells her with a nod, “A disaster shelter of sorts perhaps.”

“So, what’s the weird part?” Rose asks, quirking a brow.

“The doors were sealed when we got here,” Yura explains, “deadbolted shut. If they’d gone…how did they get out in the first place? —Those doors were sealed shut from the _outside_.”

“Medical equipment,” Oswin cuts in thoughtfully, her eyestalk swinging down towards a nearby table, “face masks…medicine…”

“Plague?” Rose quirks a brow, “Maybe being trapped in here made them sick.”

“Or just procedure,” Yura suggests, “did you see the artwork in the halls?”

“Yes,” Rose replies, “lovely work, doesn’t explain much.”

“It’s just stories,” Yura tells her, “about their past.”

“It was telling the story about a planet full of _water_ ,” Rose looks at her pointedly, “and yet everything above us is purely desert.”

“Yeah,” Yura says, “this place used to be mostly ocean—pollution and the like—it destroyed it all.”

“Like Earth,” Rose says quietly, recalling home just for the briefest of seconds before pushing the thought away.

“Yeah,” Yura says, “speaking of which—if your ship doesn’t come back, you can ride back to Earth with us—if we ever manage to get out of here that is. There used to be thirty-six of us…now there’s four—we’ve got the room now.”

“Oh, _that’s_ reassuring,” Oswin says casually.

“Stop it,” Rose tells her, “you’re a submarine with wheels and _death ray_ —I think you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Yura frowns at Oswin thoughtfully, “Dalek guns are _powerful_ …you could wipe them out by yourself.”

“Oh no,” Oswin tells her pointedly, “I’m not going out there…I don’t do spiders.”

“A Dalek is afraid a bunch of spiders?” Mike’s snide voice echoes from the background as he walks in the room, glowering eyes on Oswin, “Typical—you lot can go off and murder every man, woman and child on every planet you come across but you can’t handle _spiders_? Wish I’d known that earlier.”

“Mike lost his family to Daleks,” Yura says quietly as he passes by, heading up a set of stone stairs. “They killed his wife and child—you can’t take what he says personally Oswin…you look like a Dalek and that’s all he’ll ever see you as.”

“One of your lights has gone out,” Rose frowns at Oswin, noting the left side of her outer shell when it doesn’t light up every time she speaks.

“You’re getting distracted again,” Oswin comments to her idly in reply.

“Sorry—where was I?” Rose frowns and thinks for a moment, “oh yes…spiders.”

“She does that a lot?” Yura quirks a brow at Oswin as Rose steps around them to go stare at the monitors.

“ _So_ much,” Oswin says with exasperation, “it gets worse as she gets older.”

“So, they can breathe under water,” Rose notes as she watches the spiders in the cameras.

“That we _didn’t_ know,” Yura tells her, “but now we do…and we nearly killed you both for no reason at all.”

“Couldn’t have hurt to try,” Rose shrugs, “Mind you—I would have preferred not to have been in the halls when you did.”

“What’s she doing now?” Yura says after a beat, her gaze on the woman by the monitors. Rose has simply stopped, frozen in place like a still-frame caught on a development reel.

“Being nosy,” Oswin glowers briefly, “she can tap into the time vortex…look at people’s timelines and things…. she’s sort of… _weird_ like that.”

There was so much noise in this place, broken time lines and lost civilizations, Mike’s lost family, his sorrow and his pain and his rage…Marika went to graduate school to be a doctor and ended up here—it wasn’t what she planned. She’s got a wife back home who misses her and a two-year old daughter. Yura has a son who’s in college and an ex-husband who lives half-way across the world. John has an uncle and two sisters back home. Oswin has a Mum who loves cooking and reading and writing. She’s back home sitting on a sofa watching the Tele and wondering where her daughter is.

She’s going too deep again.

Following one timeline after another, being pulled farther and farther in. If she doesn’t stop she won’t be able to get back out again. Oswin is a girl in the seventies living on her own—no wait—she’s a girl living on Gallifrey…or is she a girl in the twenty-first century? Her name is Clara Oswald…or is it Oswin? Or the Doctor? Who is she?

What is she?

Rose blinks, the blur of the vortex dancing in her eyes as the room around her slowly comes into focus and she can hear Oswin’s panicked voice trying to snap her out of it.

“Oi!” Oswin snaps worriedly, “you’re doing it again! Focus!”

“I am focusing,” Rose frowns irritably at Oswin, “you the one who can’t seem to decide who you are…” Rose makes a face at her and turns away.

“What?” Oswin looks puzzled for a moment, “what’s that mean—have you been looking at my timeline? You _promised_ you wouldn’t…you know I don’t like you nosing about in my personal life!”

“Believe me I wish I hadn’t,” Rose winces, pressing a hand to her forehead, “your timeline is terribly loud…it’s like you’ve regenerated a hundred times and you can’t just pick one timeline, so you took them all.”

“I’m stuck in this stupid metal can,” Oswin glowers, “I’ve not changed my face—you’re the one who’s being weird right now. Can you _please_ focus? We’ve got a problem.”

“Drain the halls!” Yura is shouting somewhere in the background, people are running.

“I’m trying!” Marika shouts back.

“I’ll get the guns!” Mike calls over the chaos, shoving past Rose for the armory.

“John, grab everything you can—we’re leaving!” Yura shouts, struggling to hold the steel wheel mounted on the door.

“Water’s almost gone,” Marika calls.

“Rose—they’re trying to get in,” Oswin explains, “Those things are doing something…I can’t explain it…everything was fine and then suddenly Marika was just babbling about seeing a kid out in the water…”

“Can’t be,” Rose winces, rubbing her temples, “I’d hear the timeline.”

“I saw my Mum,” Oswin adds after a beat, “standing there at the door…looking at me through the porthole.”

“They’re _psychic_ aquatic spiders,” Rose sighs, “and they’re screwing with our heads…” she trails off, staring at the far wall with a touch of horror on her face.

He isn’t real…

He can’t be…

“Real or not…” she tells her hallucination, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Sure, you do,” the Not-Valeyard says to her, “psychic aquatic spiders living on a desert planet—now _that’s_ a bit weird, isn’t it?”

“Tell me what to do,” Rose pleads, “I don’t know how to save them.”

“Rose,” Oswin says hesitantly, “who are you talking to?”

“He’s here,” Rose murmurs, “The Valeyard.”

“No he’s not,” Oswin replies evenly, gently, “Rose he’s not here…he can’t be…. we’re miles underground and those things are playing with your head.”

“Go on—tell her,” the Not-Valeyard grins at her, “tell her how _not-real_ I am Rose…go on.”

“How are you doing that?” Rose frowns at him, “they can’t just project things into my head—I’m _Bad Wolf_ for crying out loud.”

“Your cocky is what you are,” the Not-Valeyard says, “Don’t assume being Bad Wolf makes you impervious…I did that once—got me in _heaps_ of trouble.”

“If you’re not him then your _them_ ,” Rose replies evenly, “What do you want?”

“Get out,” he tells her flatly, “Get out.”

“Why?” Rose asks, “this place belonged to those who came before you.”

“It’s ours now,” he answers calmly.

“We can’t leave,” Rose tells him, “you won’t let us.”

“ _Run_ ,” he tells her and vanishes.

“Run,” Rose echoes, “We run.”

“Run?” Yura stares at her like she’s gone mad, “We can’t just _run_ —they’ll kill us all!”

“It’s our only chance,” Rose tells her, helping her yank open the chamber door. “The halls are clear, we run and hope we make it.”

“This is really _not_ the way I imagined saving the day,” Oswin says as they all scramble out the chamber door and down the stairs.

“You can’t win all the time Oswin!” Rose calls back.

Hall after hall, tunnel after tunnel they run. Yura leads with a map of the complex on a hand-held tablet, Marika and John just behind her with Mike bringing up the rear, guns blazing. Rose and Oswin were just beside him, though Oswin is careful to keep her distance—she knows he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her as well.

“Mike!” Yura screams just as he stumbles, one of the monstrous little creatures catching him by the leg, dragging him backwards into the darkness of the halls.

“No!” Rose cries out.

 _Bang_.

Another and another, powerful beams of light and fire slamming into the walls, burning spiders and bringing down chunks of stone and debris. Mike scrambles free on all fours, the spiders are screaming.

“Move it!” Oswin snarls, her gun a blur of silver as she fires off round and round at every spider who gets too close to him.

“In here!” Yura shouts, shoving open an old stone door, the others carrying Mike inside before they slam it shut behind them.

 

                                               

* * *

 

 

“Where are we?” Marika breaths, her heart racing. Sweat beads across her forehead and her right hand is playing with the ring around her neck, a diamond wedding ring. It is the one thing that gives her hope and strength in this dark place.

“Observatory,” Yura says, “Or it would have been if this place hadn’t been buried in sand…we’re almost to the main entrance.”

“Rose…” Oswin says calmly from the other side of the room, her gaze turned upwards.

“Is there another way out from here?” Rose asks, pouring over the map beside Yura.

“No,” Yura says, and the two stare at the map together hoping for another way out.

“Rose—look…” Oswin says again.

“Not now Oswin,” Rose tells her, “We need to find a way out of here.”

“Rose— _Look_!” Oswin tries again, a little more forcefully to get her attention.

“Yes, _What_?” Rose snaps, turning to face Oswin. She stops and stares for a moment, before her hands reach out and slide cool fingers over crumbling stone, over the images displayed there. Depictions of burning landscapes and colossal chunks of rock, slamming into the ground. “Asteroid…” Rose says aloud, “Meteorite…it must have killed the planet…which is why it’s a desert now.” The wheels begin spinning in her head, thoughts racing.

“Desert planet with an underwater ocean…all the water was driven underground. The people who lived here…”

“They must have been aquatic too,” Rose surmises, “all that water…they’d have to be…that’s an awful lot of water.” She steps to the right, shining torchlight over the depictions on the walls and almost immediately feels incredibly _stupid_.

“See,” Rose says after a beat, “this is why the _Doctor_ should be doing this—this isn’t my thing…he does the mystery solving, planet saving gig. He’d have figured this out a _long_ time ago.”

“They’re spiders,” Oswin says with her eyes on the depictions of tall beings, multiple arms, many eyes, bipedal by the looks of it.

“They were spiders…and they’d have to be aquatic to survive here because of all the water,” Rose frowns thoughtfully, “and then a meteorite hit and they fled from it…. the doors were sealed from the outside— _Oh_!”

“They were trapped,” Yura says, stepping up to the images, “trapped inside the halls for centuries…the doors sealed them in.”

“And you let them out,” Rose adds, “The spiders _are_ the Enali…or what’s left of them at least. Centuries trapped underground because the bomb shelter doors won’t open. Eating whatever they find because they’re probably starving and half-mad being trapped down here…” Rose frowns, “This place is a bomb shelter—it’s their home—and we’ve pretty much invaded it.”

“And tried to drown them,” Marika adds.

“Shot a few,” Mike says.

“So they evolved,” John says, stepping up beside Rose, “evolved to survive down here.”

“Trapped for centuries,” Marika says sadly, “without sunlight…or air…just darkness and water.”

“Right,” Rose says, pushing away the pang of sorrow she feels for these poor creatures, “We need to get out of here…they’re free now…let’s just let them be and get out.”

“I second that,” Marika agrees.

“Now we know what’s happened,” Yura tells the others, “Let’s go home.”

                                   

                                               

* * *

 

Going home isn’t as simple as it seems.

It costs them, and in the end Rose is burning holes into stone walls in a desperate attempt to save the others. The spiders are frightened of her, these psychic creatures who can sense what she is on some level—why else would they send the Valeyard to speak to her? When they reach the surface, the burst through the sand, soaking wet and covered in muck. Oswin isn’t much worse for wear, all she has to do is use her boosters to get out. Everyone else is panting and exhausted, collapsing on the sand and soaking up every inch of sunlight they can get.

“Next time the Master says _let’s not go out there_ ….” Oswin tells Rose pointedly, landing neatly beside her, “ _Let’s not go out there_.”

“But we’d have missed all the fun Oswin,” Rose tells her though she hardly believes that herself at the moment, “and we wouldn’t have gotten to meet all these lovely people.”

“I’m sure glad you did though,” Yura says as she sits up, “I’m _so_ glad you did.”

 

                                 

* * *

 

 

“Call him,” Oswin says as they sit in the sand, watching the others prep their ship for launch.

“No,” Rose tells her flatly.

“Rose— _Call him_ ,” Oswin presses gently.

“You don’t know what he’s like Oswin,” Rose tells her, “the Valeyard…you don’t know him. I’m not calling him.”

“He’s got a _Tardis_ …and we’ve been here for a whole day now---if the Master were coming back he would have already.”

“He’ll come back,” Rose says pointedly, “He’d not leave us…he didn’t leave us willingly the first time and he’ll come back for us just as soon as he fixes the navigation.”

“Or he thinks your Bad Wolf and you’re a grown woman—you can get yourself home now,” Oswin counters easily.

“He’s coming back,” Rose repeats flatly.

“Call him— _or I will_ ,” Oswin says pointedly.

“ _Pushy_ ,” Rose snorts.

“Very,” Oswin retorts.

Rose pulls out her phone and stares at it. She swore she’d never call him, even when she found his number in the phone alongside the Doctor’s. She doesn’t want to call him or see him or hear his voice. Every time she looks at him she sees the Doctor, a version of the Doctor she couldn’t stand.

Her phone is ringing—she doesn’t remember dialing the number but she has.

“Hello beautiful,” his voice echoes over the ear-piece, “how’s my favorite gal?”

“Need a lift,” Rose heaves a heavy sigh of both regret and indignantly—this was _humiliating_.

“On my way,” he says too cheerfully and hangs up.

“He doesn’t even know where we are,” Oswin says aloud.

“Tracking the phone,” Rose rubs her face tiredly, “I hate him—I fucking hate him—that smug arrogant bastard Time Lord _wannabe_.”

Within minutes there is a whirling-humming sound, Rose knows it well. The Tardis—or rather _a_ Tardis—lands gracefully before them. He pops open the door with a flourish and leans against the doorframe, tweed coat, red bow-tie and oddly enough…. a fez. He flashes a dazzling smile at her before asking, “Having a spot a bother?”


	9. The Willful Tardis Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

“ _Finally_ ,” he announces grandly when Rose emerges from the depths of his Tardis, washed and clean. She’s sporting a mauve, pearl-beaded flapper dress and a matching mauve colored hat tipped to one side, her currently blond hair curled and pinned neatly to frame her face. She’s been doing this for so long she forgets to dress normally, and sometimes dressing this way feels normal—she can never tell—everything just goes all back to front half the time.

“Are we home?” Rose asks, never meeting his gaze. She felt the Tardis settle just moments ago, and she wonders if he’s brought them home or if he’s dragging them off on some mad quest of his.

“Course we are,” he tells her, “I promised I would.”

“No, we aren’t,” Rose sighs heavily—he never gets it right. “You’re thoroughly incapable of persuading the Tardis to do anything you want.”

 “Yes we are,” he makes a face and pops open the door, looks out and then closes it again, “Ah…. well…sort of.”

“Where are we?” Rose asks flatly.

“Cardiff…. smells like the twenties—looks like you dressed for the occasion too.”

“Aren’t they going to notice me?” Oswin asks—she was the current Dalek shaped elephant in the room. The Valeyard was speechless for a full minute when he saw her, circled her twice and declared this was some sort of prank.

Right now, he’s ignoring her entirely.

“Perception filters are embedded in our clothes—default procedure for protecting the timelines in any Tardis—so nobody is going to notice either of us. You on the other hand will stand out…thus you stay here.”

“Is he ever going to talk to me?” Oswin asks, watching the Valeyard bound around the console at lightning speed.

“Nope,” Rose surmises, “at least until he sorts out what you are—see that look? He’s trying to figure out what you are right now.”

“Rose,” he says, “how come you dressed like that? I don’t mind, really I don’t but I can’t help but wonder if you did some sort of super omnipotent like Time…Guardian…thing? I don’t like being manipulated you know—I really don’t—so I hope you haven’t.”

“I haven’t,” Rose glowers at him briefly, “and I’m _not_ some super omnipotent _anything_.” Honestly, she just fancied the dress and put it on. How was she to know they’d land in the twenties? Then again it could have been Bad Wolf, she could have known subconsciously where they were headed and dressed accordingly.

Was this some new ability she was developing?

She really hoped not—that’d be _so_ boring.

“Your wardrobe is a mess by the way,” Rose tells him idly, “took me an hour to organize it—have you always been this messy? I don’t remember you being that messy if I’m honest.”

“Being messy never bothered you before,” he sniffs as he tugs on his tweed overcoat and straightens the bow-tie.

“Well it bothers me _now_ ,” Rose says sharply, glowering hotly at the console, “It bothers me.”

“I’ll clean it up,” he frowns at her behavior, “are you alright?”

“No,” Rose replies quietly, “I don’t know…I’ve been wandering the universe for a hundred years…I’m different now—I’ve changed—everybody does that. I like to be clean…I like to be organized and your just…. you just…. it’s _everywhere_!”

“Your still my Rose,” he tells her, “You can’t have possibly changed _that_ much. Think about it—I’m over two thousand and I’ve hardly---…” he doesn’t get to finish that sentence; her voice is so sharp and cold he is startled.

“I am not _your_ Rose,” she says firmly, “I belong to myself—and yes you have changed…you know what I heard? I heard a Scottish accent when I dialed the Doctor—and that wasn’t even intentional. You change your face like people change clothes….and every time you change your face your somebody else. New face, new personality—same memories. That’s me…a hundred years later I’ve got the same face but a new outlook on life.”

“Ok,” he tells her, “so you’ve regenerated—that’s fine—my people do it all the time. Doesn’t change who you are—doesn’t matter what face your wearing, your still Rose.”

“I _told_ you this was a bad idea,” Rose groans aloud to Oswin.

“Can we just…go outside now?” Oswin asks tentatively, “Maybe…take a breather?”

“Rose, you remember that time in Cardiff when we fed the ducks? Remember that?” he asks after a beat, switching gears, “There’s a café here that’s just _lovely_ and they serve the best jammy dodgers I’ve _ever_ had and…”

“I don’t remember it,” Rose whispers softly, “I don’t remember living with you…or the sound of my Mum’s voice…I don’t remember the street I live on or the way our house looked—did we even live in a house?” Rose frowns, looking up at him, “I can’t remember anything…I have to use Bad Wolf to recall things now. My memory orb-thing is back in the Master’s Tardis….” She sits down heavily, there’s an ache in her voice and her eyes burn with unshed tears.

She refuses to cry in front of him.

“ _Oh_ ,” he freezes, he understands now, it’s taken him a bit but now he gets it. Humans, fragile minds even if that particular human is Bad Wolf. “I can fix that…” he says, kneeling at her feet and taking her hands in his, “I can fix that—really.”

“How?” Rose asks flatly.

“I’ll get you another,” he tells her, his fingers sliding over the ring on her right ring finger, “Whoa—that’s different.”

“What?” Rose frowns at him and then at the ring, “it’s a ring…it was a birthday present.”

“Nice ring,” he tells her casually, “did you know it’s also a tracking device?”

“ _What_?” her voice rings sharply, all the sorrow of moments before bleeding away into nothing.

“Yes, just here,” the Valeyard leans close, eyeing the ring, “Right under the diamond—he’s put a microchip imbedded in the silver. Not just any silver either, this stuff will amplify the signal from clear across the universe—he’d find you no matter where you are.” He frowns, peering closer at the red stones encircling the diamond and suddenly laughs, startling her. “Blimey…do you even know what you’re wearing?”

“What?---Oh….wolf stones…supposedly lucky,” Rose explains.

“Nope,” he grins knowingly, “Try again.”

“Not wolf stones?” Rose quirks a brow.

“Well they’re not called wolf stones...they’re called Verzsi stones, fractured pieces of the rock bed that imprisoned the Dubnaza—wolf looking creature—and these stones were designed to keep it imprisoned. Time insulated…the Dubnaza were known for their abilities with temporal manipulation—bit like the weeping angels really—and what he’s done here…” the Valeyard grins, “he’s put a leash on you—no doubt realized your value and leashed you before you got too powerful and realized what you were. Call it an investment.”

“ _What_?” Rose stares at the ring in shock.

“It’s designed to dampen your access to Bad Wolf, like a governor—go on—try and use it, or better yet try and take the ring off. See these?” he references to the peculiar Gallifreyan script along the band of the ring, “Binding words…isomorphic response. Only he can take the ring off….” He grins as he stands, patting her head before turning for the door, “The Master’s put a leash on the big bad _wolf_.”

 “Your lying,” Rose blurts out as she stands.

“Go on,” he nods towards Oswin, “try and make her human.”

“I can’t do that,” Rose sputters, “nobody can do _that_.”

“Sure, you can,” the Valeyard tells her, hands in his pockets as he regards her, “Go on—try it—isolate her timeline, narrow it down. Focus directly on her and reverse her timeline. Mind you—she’ll forget all of this and won’t know who we are or how she got here. You’ll be reversing her timeline back to the moment when she was still human while displacing her in time to a different point of her timeline after her supposed transformation…” he trails off as the Dalek in question cuts him off.

“Don’t push her,” Oswin says, “Rose you don’t have to…I’m happy---really. I can live with this…I’m trying, really I am.”

“I can’t change her back…” Rose frowns, following the methods the Valeyard explained.

“Oh, give it some _welly_ will you?” the Valeyard tells her, “Really push those limits Tyler, you can do it!”

“You’ll forget me,” Rose says as she watches Oswin.

“Never forget you,” Oswin tells her softly.

There was a peculiar burning along the band of her ring finger and when she looked, the stones were glowing.

“ _See? --leash_ ,” the Valeyard taps her forehead as he passes by, “See all that glowy stuff round your body? —Bad Wolf—but it can’t get out because that,” he nods towards her ring, “Is keeping it under control. Sure, you can do the fancy parlor tricks of the trade…but nothing big. Nothing universe altering…speaking of which,” he inhales deeply, wrinkling his nose in disgust, “Oh that’s just foul—absolutely _cheating_. You absolutely _reek_ of him Rose Tyler,” he says almost accusingly, “Oh that’s disgusting—all those _parts_ —however did you two manage it?”

“Oh shut up,” Rose flushes pink, “It’s none of your business—hang on—you can smell him on me?”

“Of course—you shared physical contact with him, you’ve got his scent all over you. Oh, that’s just foul—who does that honestly? And with a _human_ no less... you humans and all those chemicals bouncing round in your brains.”

“You did too,” Rose tells him pointedly, “and he’s not manipulating me…. he wouldn’t do that.”

“Not _now_ ,” he sputters indignantly, “I’m all up to par now…and yes, he would, especially if it benefited him. Think about it, will you? He probably realized how much potential you have and wanted to keep it all to himself.”

 “It’s not like we’re a _thing_ ,” Rose argues, “it was just…a one-time thing…curiosity…or something.” Rose frowns as she stares at her hands, “I nearly lost him and things just sort of happened.”

“Please—really—I don’t want to know,” the Valeyard replies, “I really don’t want to know…I mean can you imagine? I’m surprised it even worked…everything’s all voluntary with us—how’d he manage it? You’re human and all…I mean seriously---…”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Oswin’s voice is sharp as ice, cutting through their conversation, “Can’t you hear yourself? Hear what you’re saying? Look at her face— _look at her_!”

The Valeyard pauses for a moment in the middle of his rant, his gaze on Rose’s downturned face.

Oh.

“Rose I wasn’t meaning it to be a slight on your species…” he trails off.

“We were going to have children,” Rose says after a beat, looking up to meet his gaze, “Marriage…all of it. Now—now that your all better and _up to par_ , you couldn’t be bothered with a stupid little ape, right?”

“That isn’t what I meant Rose…I just…” He’s momentarily flabbergasted by his own mouth—how does it get away from him like that?

“I don’t care,” Rose gets up and strides towards the door, “I’ll find my own way home—Oswin are you coming?”

“Right behind you,” Oswin says, rolling down the grating and towards the door.

“Now hang on,” the Valeyard bounds down the grating after them, “Look…”

“Nope,” Rose replies, yanking open the door and stepping out into the early morning streets of Cardiff.

“Well it isn’t like he can come find you,” the Valeyard tells her as he follows them out, “his Tardis is broken.”

“Is it?” another voice cuts in, and when she turns there is a deep sense of relief washing over her—really, she shouldn’t be so happy to see him—he’s an arrogant sod the majority of the time and he’s lied to her on top of everything else. The Master turns and looks at the Tardis behind him thoughtfully, then back at the Valeyard, “Odd.”

“See?” The Valeyard calls to Rose’s retreating form as she steps around the Master and heads for the Tardis. “ _Leash_ , Rose Tyler. He’s already found you—now that his Tardis works properly at least.”

The Master stiffens, a brief flash of alarm crossing his features as he meets the Valeyard’s knowing gaze. “Leave.”

He only grins cheekily, amused at the alarm in the Master’s posture, “Oh _somebody’s_ worried. I’ve told her everything—good luck with that, I’m off.” He turns for his Tardis just as Rose’s voice cuts through the sudden gloom of the situation.

“Oi,” she calls to him from the door of her own Tardis, “Missy sends her love.”

Then she slams the door—right in the Master’s face.

 

                                         

* * *

 

That felt _glorious_.

The Valeyard’s expression was priceless, that sudden shock of alarm and weariness, the Master’s expression when she slammed the door in his face—her way of telling him she was happy to see him but absolutely furious.

More furious then happy.

Much more.

She struggles with the ring, but it won’t come off. How has she never noticed this damn thing before? She’s worn it so loyally because it was a treasured gift he gave her, and now that same gift is a lie and it’s a gilded cage he’s trapped her in without her knowing it.

She should have known better.

“I’m so _stupid_ ,” she rages aloud.

“Yes you are,” the Master agrees from outside, “you’ve left your Dalek out here with me.”

“Bollocks…” Rose blinks as her gaze turns to the door.

She’d forgotten Oswin.

“You might as well open it,” he calls again, “you’ve got to let her in at some point.” When she says nothing, he adds, “I have a _key_.”

Oh.

He was waiting for her to open the door rather than unlock it, giving her the chance to calm down. “Fine.”

When the door opens, he pushes his way in and steps around her, Oswin following in behind him. “Well that was rather _anticlimactic_ , wasn’t it? You should probably plan your dramatic exits a bit better than that.”

“Take it off,” she demands as he rounds the console, “right now.”

“No,” he tells her casually, “I’d really rather not.”

“I won’t be your pet to be kept on a leash!” Rose all but shouts.

“Do you remember when you nearly blew up the universe?” he asks her after a pause, “that single moment in time when you thought _fuck it_ , and nearly killed us all?”

“I wouldn’t have done,” Rose argues, “I was trying to save _you_.”

“ _Please_ ,” he scoffs, “you were beyond caring anymore—it didn’t matter to you what burned so long as you fixed everything along the way. The _only_ reason you didn’t manage to burn everything—and something you would have discovered if you’d actually tried—is that ring. I saw it coming you know…over the years you got better at controlling your abilities but you were losing your humanity with the passing years. That isn’t your fault of course, it’s natural for someone who lives as long as we do. You stop being human, you stop caring, because you live apart from the world now, no longer among your own kind. So, I made the ring and tricked you into wearing it all these years to save you from yourself while also keeping this universe intact at the same time.”

“You’re a right _bastard_ ,” Rose tells him flatly.

“Yes,” he agrees, “but a _smart_ bastard. I knew you were in love me—have been for years, though you’d never admit it,” he tells her pointedly even upon seeing the indignant look on her face, “and I knew you’d wear that ring if I gave it to you. Love is dangerous, isn’t it? You see why my people don’t do it? Do you understand now? Love is dangerous for Time Lords…we can’t get emotionally attached because of our power over time and space. You have to rise above all this Rose Tyler, you have to be stronger. You can’t lose your head when I’m in danger, you can’t risk the safety of a billion, billion lives because of me.”

“First,” Rose sputters, “I am _not_ in love with you—ego much? Secondly…I knew what I was doing, I could do it. You don’t trust me—I get that. I knew I could do it though…I could fix everything and not break the universe. Thirdly…the Valeyard told me what you’re on about and I seriously hope he’s wrong. He thinks you’re just keeping me on a leash and finding any little way to tie me to you so you can use me for your own ends.”

He stares at her for a moment over the console, “Perhaps,” he begins as he walks towards her, “Imagine it, though would you? Just for a moment…between the two of us, we could fix this universe. With my genius and your power, the Earth would be a paradise. No more war, no more violence…no more pollution—Rose I have so _many_ ideas! So many ideas on ways to resolve the conflicts that trouble this universe! Your infant little species is so busy and massive, so chaotic and without guidance. It needs discipline and guidance, and you and I…we could do that. _Mum and Dad_ —the two of us.”

“And of all your _fascinating_ plans,” Rose tells him, “Name one of them that actually benefited the Earth. I remember your stories…and one in particular—what was it? —Oh yes, you turned the entire planet into _multiple copies of yourself_ , how did _that_ benefit the Earth?”

“Well,” he says tentatively, “at least your people weren’t _apes_ anymore.”

_Crack._

He rubs his stinging cheek, staring down at the fuming blond before him, “alright…I may have deserved that one.”

He’s lost it.

Rose just stares at him like a woman whose only just seen him for the first time. All these years she knew he had it in him but she’s never seen it first-hand. Has he been hiding this from her all this time? “No…” Rose tells him after a beat, “I won’t do it. I won’t help you—this is _mad_. I am _not_ that woman—you should know that by now. I don’t know if you thought me loving you would be enough to make me do that—it really _isn’t_ and I’m _really_ not—but believe me mate, I won’t stand for it.” She’s facing him now, shoulders squared, her expression as if cut from stone, “I will stop you—I can promise you that—I don’t care what it takes or what I have to do, I will _never_ let you have this universe.”

He stares blankly for a moment before saying, “You know…that was by _far_ the worst impression of the Doctor I’ve ever seen.”

“Arrg!” Rose snarls, and turns on heel, storming for the door.

“Rose,” his voice is cold and hard, laced with anger, “ _this_ is who I am—it’s who I’ve always been. I’ve _never_ changed and now you act as though I’ve been keeping some big secret from you! I won’t lie about my ambitions or my dreams…I have _good_ ideas—not always—but mostly good ideas. What’s so wrong with me wanting to share those ambitions with you? What’s wrong with having a dream?”

“Because you’re a power happy _megalomaniac_!” Rose shouts, “Bad Wolf _Out_ ,” she announces as she yanks the doors open and steps outside.

Did she _really_ just say that?

She’s walking out into the streets, thankfully dressed like she belongs here. Behind her, the Tardis gleams in the streetlights and in the door way stands the Master, tugging on his coat before following after her. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Somewhere far away from _you_ ,” she announces in reply.

“No point in running from me,” he calls as he follows along behind her down the street, “I can track you.”

“Fuck you,” she hisses without looking at him, “and fuck your plans.”

“I ought to wash your mouth out with soap Rose Tyler,” he comments idly, “such _language_ from a lady.”

The ever-unflappable Time Lord—he was so damn _annoying_.

“Stay away from me,” she warns him dangerously, “I fucking bloody well mean it this time. I’m done—I’ll find my own way home. Fuck off and go annoy someone else.”

“Nope,” he tells her casually, popping the _p_. “I like it here,” he sniffs, hands in his trouser pockets, “I think I’ll stay for a while.”

“You’ve got what you want,” Rose whirls around to shout at him, “You’ve got the Tardis working— _leave_! Fuck off and go back to the universe prime and terrorize the Doctor or something— _just leave me alone_!”

“ _No_ ,” he smiles casually—that was his alarming I-have-big-plans smile—a smile she does not like at all. “You are invaluable, and if I leave someone else will just come along to scoop you up. Wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

“I am _Bad Wolf_ ,” Rose flares angrily, “and I won’t be kept on a leash by some cocky pompous Time Lord.”

“And I am _The Master_ ,” he tells her as he steps close, leaning close, “ _and you will obey me_ —I’ve wanted to say that forever you know?”

“You’re an idiot,” Rose retorts and steps around him, freezing in place as she gazes upon something that makes her stomach drop. “NO!” she shouts, darting forward.

The Tardis was taking off—without them in it.

“Did you set the parking the brake?” Rose shouts angrily.

“Of _course_ I did,” he hisses back irritably.

“Then explain that?” Rose shouts, motioning to the spot where the Tardis once stood, “ _Oswin_ can’t fly the Tardis—so _what the fuck_?”

“I don’t believe it,” he says after a beat, “she left us here—that miserable old bucket of bolts just dumped us off here and legged it!”

“Are you telling me the Tardis just decided to leave on her own?” Rose sputters, “you’re _actually_ going to blame this on a her?”

“Rose I could practically feel her sticking her tongue out at us as she left— _yes_ —I _am_ going to blame her.”

“Your just…” she takes a deep breath—her ring finger is burning again—and struggles to regain her composure. How has she never noticed the ring burning like that? Or maybe, not that she was aware of it…she understood.

“Perception filter,” he says as if reading her mind, “you never noticed it because you never knew the truth of it.”

“ _I hate you_ ,” she says after a beat, tears burning in her eyes, “I _fucking_ hate you.” She turns on heel and walks away, leaving him to stand in the street alone under the faint light from the street lamps overhead.

 

                                         

* * *

 

 

He finds her in a coffee shop, six blocks away.  She’s sitting under the dim lighting and staring at the table with a hollow, tired expression and a half-warm cup of coffee held between her pale slender hands. He sits down across from her and says nothing. It isn’t the worst fight they’ve ever had, but definitely the most troubling. He isn’t sure how to fix this one. He’d meant to tell her eventually, make her understand why he made the ring for her. Admittedly she frightens him on many levels, her naivety and her inexperience make her reckless and unpredictable with such power. She needed guidance and she needed discipline and he wanted to give her both, so the ring was a necessity.

So, he may have used her ever growing attachment to him, tricked her into wearing the ring. She wouldn’t have worn it if she knew what it was—and he needed her to wear that ring—a fail-safe in case something went wrong. He also envied her power, oh what he could _do_ with such power!

“Along time ago…” he says hesitantly as if he does not like recounting the memory, “I travelled with someone—Ayla. I loved her—I really did—and she was human or so I thought. Then she died and so I blew up a planet to save her…I refused to lose her you see. Then come to find out…” he pauses, his fingers gently prying her hands from the mug resting between them, “she hadn’t died at all—she’d merely regenerated. She was a Time Lady sent by the council to spy on me. She’d run off with the Doctor after the incident...and after that day…after knowing the truth of her lies…I swore I’d never be such a fool again…I let my emotions cloud my judgement and all those people died to save a woman who hadn’t even needed saving to begin with.”

“What was she like?” Rose asks after a beat, staring at their entwined fingers—he was doing it to prove the truth of his words, showing her his memories as he tells the story, “Beautiful, brilliant…the only person I’ve ever actually _wanted_ to travel with.” Rose can see her now, a tall brunette with a bright smile and sharp green eyes. She was as good with the technical stuff as the Master is, and just as quick.

“She’s lovely,” Rose tells him quietly.

“Don’t hate me,” he says after a beat, “seriously—I would have told you eventually.”

“I don’t want to be on a leash…” Rose whispers.

“It’s not a _leash_ ,” he says softly, “it’s a ring—and it’s for your own good.”

“You know what I mean,” Rose glowers at him.

“I do—and I meant what I said in the Tardis. You and I could do such grand things with that power of yours.”

“And I meant what I said too,” Rose tells him firmly, pulling her fingers from his grasp, “I _will_ stop you.”

“Don’t you believe in me,” he says with a frown, irritation and maybe just a hint of hurt in his gaze, “just a little at all?”

“I do,” Rose tells him, “I think you could do grand things—but the price is too high.”

“Not if we do it right,” he argues, “not if we write the rules ourselves—and we could. Who says people have to die or planets have to burn—your _Bad Wolf_. You get to make the decisions and you can re-write history however you want it.”

“I know,” Rose tells him with a sad smile, “which is why I _can’t_.”

He heaves a heavy sigh and leans back in the seat. If he’s disappointed with her, he doesn’t show it. He merely stares out the window and she at the table till closing time. Then they walk down the street together towards a hotel.

“I want a balcony,” Rose tells him, “a suite…two beds, and I want VIP access.”

“Rose were in the middle of the _prohibition_ ,” the Master complains aloud, “ _remember_? We’ve got to be _frugal_.”

“ _Fuck_ frugal,” Rose tells him cheekily, “you lost the Tardis, tricked me into wearing this ring and now you’re going to get me a decent room with a hot tub. I’ll be at the bar—find me after you’ve got it done—and just for the record were in _London_ , there is no prohibition here that was just in America—nice try.”

“I’m beginning to think _I’m_ the one on the leash,” he calls to her as she goes before turning towards the front desk with a focused expression—now to get them a room.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

With the dry taste of a well-made martini on her tongue and the slow sweet sound of jazz in the background, Rose Tyler was very happy. She casually glances towards the reception desk in the other room, the Master was busy. There were perks to travelling with a Time Lord who had a gift with hypnotism. They never needed money, he could get them anything they needed.

Not that Rose approved of such things and she wouldn’t let him do anything to grand—but right now was an exception. They’ve had a long night and she was exhausted, the only thing she wanted at the moment was a hot bath and a stiff drink.

“Dance with me?” his voice startles her because she was so caught up in the sway of the song she hadn’t realized he’d approached the bar.

“You don’t _dance_ ,” Rose tells him, “hell you hardly smile.”

“I smile,” he tells her with a wrinkle of his brow, “I smile all the time—you should have seen me smiling back in the universe prime…I had loads of fun.”

“No fun here eh?” Rose downs the last of her martini, “Just boring old me and a rusty Tardis.”

“ _Dance_ with me Rose Tyler,” he tells her, taking her hand and swinging her up against him.

“Oi!” Rose squeaks, her body swung up against his as he leads them off into a slow elegant turn across the floor, swaying to the jazz in the background. “What are you on about?”

“Just for posterity,” he says, grazing his lips across hers.

“Of _course_ ,” Rose rolls her eyes and dawns a loving look, a sweet happy grin on her lips.

The happy couple---such a typical routine for them.

“And now for the _coup de gras_ ,” he tells her knowingly though it’s Rose who starts, catching him by surprise. Her hand slides over his bum and squeezes lightly, the tips of her fingers curving back over his hip.

“The _cheek_ ,” he murmurs near her ear, “you’ll cause a _scandal_.”

“Causing a bit more than a scandal I’d say,” Rose grins, “I thought all that was voluntary?”

“Posterity,” he reminds her, “wouldn’t do to not look the part of an amorous and lustful male of your species.”

“Oh, you’re _so_ romantic,” Rose bites back a smile.

“I do try,” he says as they turn arm in arm and head for the elevator.

Days turns into weeks, Rose insists they do something. Buy a house, look normal. They couldn’t stay in this hotel forever, or keep changing hotels for that matter. It was clear the Tardis wasn’t coming back any time soon. Oswin—poor Oswin—was stuck in that Tardis alone.

“I’m not buying a house—we are not going _domestic_ ,” he tells her firmly, “absolutely not.”

                                                       

* * *

 

They buy a house.

A manor house in the country, away from the noise and the lights and the nosy neighbors. It’s old and worn but with a lot of work, Rose has it cleaned up and polished. The Master tinkers in the basement—he calls it his laboratory—and Rose builds up an impressive library on the second floor. To outsiders, it’s merely a scientist living with his wife in seclusion in the countryside. They blend in, Rose starts a garden outside, reads her books, walks the hillsides, sits with him by the fire and listens to him blither on about some new contraption of his. Their lives were simple and _dull_.

So very dull.

He was beyond bored and she was tired of the same old mundane thing every day. She liked the manor house though, she liked the burnished wood paneling and the elegant tapestries, the wood floors, the carpets, the staircase. It was every inch the Master’s tastes but with a little of Rose in the mix.

Rose gets a job.

She works for Torchwood again, except it’s now the late twenties and everything’s different. She’s not the boss anymore, just an employee—she likes that. Not having all that weight on her shoulders, just going to work and sitting at a desk, going home and making dinner—the Master does most of the work but Rose helps. She enjoys cooking with him, it’s fun. They sip wine and talk about her work and his inventions.

Maybe this mundane stuff isn’t so bad.

“Would you be cross if I went into politics?” he asks her over dinner one evening.

“Politics?” Rose sips her wine, “I wouldn’t expect any less.”

“Nothing drastic,” he tells her, “I won’t go trying to be Prime Minister again—I was rubbish at it anyways.”

“Yes, you were,” she agrees as she recalls his story about the Valiant.

“That was the part where you say _I thought you were a brilliant Prime Minister_ ,” he says with a tiny grin.

“Oh _really_?” Rose blinks, “Sorry---yes—you were grand, _really_.”

“You almost made me believe you,” he shakes his head, chuckling.

“I do try,” she cuts up her steak neatly, taking small bites.

“Let’s have a baby,” he announces suddenly.

Rose all but chokes on her wine, nearly spitting it back out as he speaks, “ _What_?”

“Kidding—I just wanted to get your attention—I’ve estimated that the Tardis will probably reappear around the early nineties. She can only wander so far on her own without a pilot before the automatic return kicks in. Thus, it’ll cut the trip short…I imagine she’s gone back to your Mum’s house in the twenty-first century—can you imagine the surprise she’ll get if the Tardis did? A Dalek popping out of the Tardis.” He laughs, “It’s almost comical.”

“So were stuck here…. it’s 1928,” Rose says, “that’s like…. _sixty-five_ years.”

“Yes,” he tells her, “And we landed in 1923—we’ve got a way to go.”

 

                                         

* * *

 

 

**1948**

The sky is full of zeppelins again, and Rose sees the hints of her own time coming back into play. They have lived through one of the worst wars in history, and somehow the manor is still standing and they are still together. Rose is a journalist now for the paper—she quit Torchwood. The Master took up teaching—which was very weird for Rose—she had a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea of him being a teacher. In the evenings, he’s plays on the piano for her and she listens, letting the music lull her to sleep. On late Saturday afternoons, she’ll read her articles aloud to him, he’s a good critic.

**1950**

 

The fifties were her thing—so were the twenties—but Rose Tyler loved the fifties. The big skirts, the big hair, she loved it all. The Manor still stands but of course, it’s been remodeled many times by now. They have to be careful of course, always changing appearance because they don’t age like everyone else does. Rose has changed hair color and fashion sense more times then she can count, and the Master—much to her dismay—occasionally shaves off his beard and changes his suit. Time Lords—he claims—don’t have to change all that much because they don’t stand out.

**1955**

 

They move to New York.

The manor is still theirs, but they now live in an upscale apartment high above the city. The Master still tinkers and builds and creates, Rose works for another newspaper. It is this day, that she first meets him—John Smith.

His name was _actually_ John Smith—and how that even happened is beyond Rose.

Human and naïve, John sat in the cubicle across from hers and brought her coffee every morning. He always had a smile and joke on hand, and he held such a startling resemblance to the Doctor she found it difficult to look at him at times. They get closer, long nights working on articles together, laughter and food and many, many cups of coffee later he’s asking her out on a date.

Their first date is at central park, where he surprises her with a picnic and a boat ride after. He loves to sail as it turns out, and a week later on yet another date, takes her out to sea in a sail boat he owns. John is a good man, and kind man—and he deserves better than her. Rose Tyler can see it plain as day that he’ll grow old one day and she won’t—which is what she now understands, it’s what the Doctor saw when he looked at her.

The Master is unusually quiet these days—he hardly makes a sound whenever John comes over for dinner. She introduces him as her roommate, and John’s all smiles and polite conversation. It is exactly four months into their relationship when the Master finally says something.

“You know,” he tells her over afternoon tea, the paper spread out before him, “He’s _human_.”

“I’m human,” Rose says back, refusing to meet his gaze.

“Hardly,” he scoffs.

“I’m careful,” Rose tells him, “I know he can’t know the truth.”

“That isn’t particularly fair to him, is it?” The Master says after a beat, “Or to me.”

“How does this affect _you_?” Rose blinks as he tosses the paper aside and gets up, leaving the room.

                                                                   

* * *

 

 

He keeps popping up randomly.

They’ll be sitting at a restaurant enjoying a lovely meal and suddenly he’ll appear in the window and demand he needs to speak with her. He’ll come barging in and sit at the table with them and start discussing complex and difficult topics to which John struggles to keep up.

Finally, one night when she returns home late from work he says, “I think we should move—we’ve been here too long as is.”

“We’ve only been here two years,” Rose argues, “and I don’t want to leave John.”

He heaves a dramatic sigh, “ _when_ are you going to understand?  You endanger him every second you’re with him. You won’t age as he will—doesn’t that _bother_ you? Wouldn’t you prefer someone who will age the same as you do?”

 “He’s not in any danger,” Rose frowns, “I’m careful when were together and--…”

“You _slept_ with him?” The Master blurts out, his gaze meeting hers.

“Well it isn’t like I’m getting anything _here_ ,” Rose snarls angrily, fed up with his attitude.

“You’ve never asked,” he makes a face, “and you know how my people feel about those sorts of things.”

“I don’t just mean sex,” Rose tells him firmly, “I mean love…. friendship…trust…what you and I are…this is arrangement…we’re just two people forced to live together because we haven’t got anyone else. This—what we are—there’s no love here. I’m tired of being alone…. I want to wake up with someone in bed with me, I want to watch movies and eat pizza together and do all those little things that couples do…. I need that, and I’m _lonely_. I can’t do this the way you do, I’m still _human_ —or at least parts of me are. If you want me—then I’m yours. I’ve been yours for as long as I can remember---which isn’t particularly far but according to my journals it’s been a long while. If you can’t do that, if you won’t…then let me be with someone who will.” Rose turns on heel and leaves him alone in the big empty apartment with naught more than his contraptions and books for company.

 

                                                   

* * *

 

 

She spends a whole week at John’s, and in the early morning hours she stares at the ceiling of his apartment and thinks of the Master. He’s asleep beside her, the blankets coiled around him. Rose doesn’t mind though, it was too hot out to have heavy blankets. John stirs beside her—he knows they’ve quarreled which is why she’s here—and blinks sleepily at her, “You awake?”

“Yeah,” Rose says quietly.

“Thinking of him again?” he asks after a beat.

“Yeah,” Rose admits.

“He isn’t your roommate, is he?” John asks quietly, almost sadly.

“I don’t know what he is anymore,” Rose sighs softly, “but I’m here with you.”

“Are you?” John asks, rolling onto his side to look at her, “We’ve been together nearly a year now. How come I’ve only ever met him?”

“He’s all I have,” Rose replies softly.

“How’s that?” he presses gently.

“It’s complicated,” Rose tells him, “please don’t make me explain…just know that it really is difficult to explain and that I’m here with you and not him for a _reason_.”

“Tell me the reason,” he asks after a beat.

“He doesn’t love me back,” Rose whispers softly into the dark, “he doesn’t…. he can’t…”

“I get it,” he says quietly, “you don’t have to explain.”

 

                                                       

* * *

 

When she returns to their apartment, he’s in his room with the door closed so she sneaks past and slips into her room undetected.

She hopes.

He’s got very good hearing that man, but perhaps she’s lucky and he’s asleep or very busy. Either way, she’d rather not talk to him. The things she’s said to him a week ago, she can’t take back. She isn’t sure if she loves him, she isn’t sure what this thing is between them. It’s love but friendship, or maybe it’s just a sort of _advanced_ friendship. It’s bigger then both of them though, and so vast and strong she can’t really explain it. He drives her mad and makes her angry and makes her laugh. He’s always got an opinion—and usually not one she asks for or even wants—and he’s completely unpredictable. Honest to a fault, truthful even when it hurts. He won’t lie about who and what he is, and that much became quite clear when he admitted to her his ambitions for her abilities.

“Rose,” his voice on the opposite side of the door startles her.

“Go away,” she says softly, she refuses to let him in.

“Not likely,” he counters with a sigh.

“Seriously just go away,” she replies.

“I’ll _sit_ out here, so help me,” he replies evenly.

“You are the most _stubborn_ \--…” she doesn’t finish the sentence because he just comes right on in, sprawling out across the foot of her bed with his hands on his stomach as he regards her.

“You’ve been gone a whole week,” he tells her.

“I have,” she replies.

“Church bells?” he makes a face.

“Shut up,” she rolls her eyes, “We’re not engaged or anything.”

“I’ve a solution for you,” he tells her after a beat.

“Like what?” she asks him plainly because she’s tired of arguing, tired of the confusing emotions she feels every time she looks at him.

“This,” he says, holding up a silver ring, plain save for tiny flashes of red gem weaved throughout the silver and Gallifreyan script etched across the band.

“Another ring?” he stares at him flatly before turning to climb off the bed.

“For me,” he tells her after a pause, and his words make her stop. “It’s for me…” he says, “it’s similar to yours except this time…only you can remove it. I had bits of that stone left…and I weaved them into the silver.”

“Seriously?” Rose looks at him curiously—this was difficult for him she could tell. Giving over control to her wasn’t exactly his thing. Yet here he was, willing to wear a ring only she could remove as only he could remove the one she wore.

“Yes,” he says, holding the ring out to her, “if it please my lady.”

She takes the ring and stares at it, feels the weight of it in her palm, “I don’t want to trap you.”

“I never intended for it to be a trap for you either,” he admits, “I merely wanted to ensure the safety of all who live in the universe—I’m a Time Lord…it’s instinct.” He holds out his ring hand, and curiously, she slides the ring onto his right ring finger. She stares at it for a second and then moves to take it back off, “No…” he pulls away from her, keeping her from removing it. “Leave it.”

“No,” Rose frowns at him, “I won’t do this…it isn’t right.”

“It is,” he says as he meets her gaze, “Right enough I suppose—besides…it goes well with my plan for world domination via Bad Wolf.”

She rolls her eyes, “sweet talker, you.”

“I strive ever to impress you Rose Tyler,” he says on a sigh, admiring the ring in the dim light of her room.

“What’s this mean then—for us?” Rose asks tentatively.

“I should think that’d be obvious,” he tells her. “My people really don’t do this you know— _this_ ,” he says as he motions between them, “I did it once and as you recall, it rather _spectacularly_ blew up in my face.”

“ _Are you mine_?” Rose asks plainly.

“As much as I can be,” he tells her honestly, meeting her gaze, “though you’ll need to find another arch-nemesis—I’m already taken.”

“Yeah, I don’t know—I’ve not seen an interview I can’t be certain I’d even be interested honestly,” Rose tells him cheekily.

“I’d make the _best_ arch-nemesis,” he says mockingly affronted, “but you’d not be able to keep up with my level of fun, let’s be honest here. Your idea of confronting my level of intelligence is by bashing me over the head with a piece of old _wood_.”

“I panicked,” Rose laughs, “and you were scary…I’d never met another Time Lord before.”

“ _I’m_ scary?” he rolls onto his stomach to look at her, “you’re flipping _Bad Wolf_ —you’re literally the scariest bed time story on Gallifrey.”

“Are you really frightened of me?” Rose asks after a pause.

“Yes,” he says honestly, “who wouldn’t be? Naturally I had to take precautions.”

“Yes,” Rose agrees as she mulls it over, “I suppose your right.”

“Are you mine?” he asks softly.

“Yes,” Rose tells him.

He seems satisfied with that response, his gaze on her face as he catalogs each expression and gesture. Then he stands and stretches and does the most impossibly rude and unromantic thing ever.

He bites her.

“Oi!” Rose squeals embarrassingly and scrambles to get away from him but his grip around her waist is firm and his hand on the back of her neck is strong. When he releases her shoulder, he looks perfectly pleased with himself. “What the _fuck_!?”

“What?” he blinks at her, baffled by her behavior, “what’s wrong?”

“You _bit_ me, you bonehead!” Rose snaps, rubbing her sore shoulder. He hadn’t broken the skin but their will definitely be a nasty bruise there tomorrow.

“ _Territory_ ,” he tells her as if she were a bit dim and it were obvious, “obviously—unless you’d rather me do this old school and--…” he doesn’t get to finish the sentence.

“ _No_ ,” Rose cuts him off quickly, she remembers the things he told her once about Gallifreyan customs. The more she thinks on it the more she recalls, and she really doesn’t fancy the idea of him tattooing his name in Gallifreyan glyphs on some part of her body. “And don’t ever say _old school_ again.”

“Just as long as I never have to hear _Bad Wolf Out_ , ever again,” he retorts cheekily.

“It was awful,” she agrees.

“Very,” he nods.

“Now what?” Rose asks after a pause.

He ponders for a moment before he says, “Chips?”

“Yes please,” Rose tells him with a smile, the two heading out arm in arm to find a chippery.


	10. The Willful Tardis Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

She breaks it off with John.

He’s a good man and he deserves someone better than her, she’s always known that.

They move again but this time it isn’t to another apartment or house. Instead they travel, Africa, India, Peru, all over the world. He teaches her, tells her stories, they try new food and explore old ruins. Their lives might not involve universe impending doom, but it’s still fun. He is different with her but very private about it. This is something he is not comfortable with, something his people didn’t approve of because they felt it was obsolete.

“Explain it to me,” Rose asks late one night, lying side by side with him. He’s bare chested and her fingers curl in the light sprinkle of pale blond hair scattered across his skin. Sex is a rarity for them not because it isn’t fun—because it is—but because they don’t need it. He’s taught her that love is more than physical contact, but a level of friendship that surpasses all others. They can lie together like this and it is enough, they can confess the darkest of secrets to each other and hide nothing.

“It’s difficult,” he tells her, shifting across the mattress—it’s an uncomfortably hard one, the room they’ve rented aboard the ship they currently travel on didn’t particularly come with comfortable accommodations. “We never gave up our virginity as a norm for good reason. We need it to access vital data stored in our memory, our matrix.”

“Did you have brothels though? Prostitution? Secret love affairs?” She grins at him, she always loves a good story.

“Yes,” he admits with a roll of his eyes, “we have all that too. Sometimes—though nobody really liked it much—people got married for love.”

“So, it’s voluntary because you can control everything, but the act of voluntarily doing it is taboo on your planet?” Rose replies, mulling over the information.

“Yes,” he tells her, “as is…. _this_ ,” he says as he motions between them, “a human and a Time Lord…. but I’ve never been much for rules anyways,” he shrugs with a sigh.

He doesn’t particularly like displays of affection in front of anyone, but Rose doesn’t either. In public, their about as intimate or couple-like as two roommates would be. Nobody would suspect a thing but in private their different. In private, they might hold hands, fingers touching over the dinner table to express an emotion one or the other couldn’t speak aloud. It takes Rose a while to find her footing with him, Gallifreyan custom was so different from humans that they’d often get confused with each other. Human men would typically give off unspoken signals that they’re interested in a little bedroom adventure, but a Gallifreyan man just decides he wants to without warning and she’s completely caught off guard by his sudden interest. On a planet where everybody is psychic and emotion is expressed via the mind rather than physically, a lot of confusion can occur. He’ll claim it was obvious when she’s startled by his sudden zealous, and she’ll claim he was reading the paper across the room and gave no indication she even existed until the moment that he was practically carrying her off to their room.

 

**1978**

“Oh, I _love_ the seventies,” Rose grins at him, sprawled across their bed. The clothes, the music, the parties—it was a blast.

“I’ve license to wear black velvet again,” he muses aloud, buttoning the starch white linen of his shirt.

“Never,” Rose tells him pointedly, “I’ll burn them.”

“You wouldn’t _dare_ ,” he tells her.

“Do you think the Tardis will ever come back?” Rose asks after a beat, “I love this, travelling round with you and wandering through every era in Earth’s history but I miss…. I miss Oswin…and I miss my little pink memory orb—do you know how frustrating it is to have to write everything down now?”

“They’ll start making decent video cameras soon enough,” he assures her.

“Not nearly soon enough,” Rose complains aloud, watching him pick out a pair of shiny black shoes from the closet, “and it’s ridiculously hot here.” Chicago in the middle of a heat wave during the summer—brilliant. How he can wear a suit in all this heat was beyond her, but he explained that he can regulate his body temperature so the heat won’t really bother him so much as it does her.

They spend the summer walking the humid streets of Chicago, and in the winter they leave for Budapest to explore the architecture and try the cuisine. This life is less boring then when they were living in one spot—she also thinks he might be doing it because he wants to ensure she doesn’t get bored.

 

**1987**

 

“You’re an insecure sod,” Rose accuses sharply, “I wasn’t flirting or being saucy or running off with anyone!”

“Could have fooled me,” he scowls at her darkly, “what’s mine is _mine_ , Rose Tyler. You agreed to this and my people don’t believe in divorce.”

“We aren’t _married_!” Rose all but shouts, slamming the bathroom door in his face and then locking it.

Asshole.

It was the first fight they’ve had in years—they argue occasionally but never like this—and Rose was frustrated with him. He was a possessive sort, but also gave her free reign to do as she pleased. He did not like however, if she gave up too much attention to another man. They’d settled again in England, taking up residence in the manor again. Rose works for a law firm—she’s been to college at least twice now—and the Master is back into politics again. Her partner is young and handsome and brilliant, she works late hours with him only because she must in order to get the work load done.

The Master does not like this, but he never likes it when anyone steals the spotlight from him. He knows there is nothing untoward happening between she and her partner but his own insecurity drives him to behave the way he does. Rose never realized at first how insecure he was about some things, but over the years she worked it out. That isn’t to say she doesn’t have her own insecurities—namely his secretary—and the woman at the bakery, and occasionally even Oswin even though Oswin was a Dalek—who she missed dearly—and maybe even the lady down the road living in that cottage they pass every morning while going for a stroll through the countryside.

“Open the door,” he grumbles, his forehead pressed against the wood, “you know bickering like this is useless for me—there’s a better way to resolve it.”

“Sometimes,” Rose says aloud, “sometimes I just want a private moment in my head without you needing to go parading around in it to sort out our differences.”

“You never complained once last night,” he reminds her.

“That’s different,” Rose hisses irritably, “and…well…”

Shit.

“Well?” he quirks a brow.

“And get that damn contraption you built out of the hall downstairs,” Rose tells him, quickly changing the subject, “it’s leaking oil everywhere—what are you trying to build anyways?”

“I’m hoping it could track the Tardis for us,” he admits quietly, “maybe if I can lock onto her signal I could force her to land.”

“ _Seriously_?” Rose yanks open the door so fast he almost tumbles forward into her.

“ _No_ ,” he tells her, his trickery achieved. He steps forward into the bathroom, filling the doorway before his hands cup her face. “I lied—you wouldn’t open the door otherwise.”

“You’re a wanker,” she tries to wiggle free, but stops, tears burning her eyes.

“I am yes,” he agrees, “and a megalomaniacal irritating sod, but I’m _your_ megalomaniacal irritating sod and you agreed to it—so _deal_.”

“You act like this is permanent,” Rose grumbles, “you’re not bound to me.”

“No,” he agrees, “but you agreed to it and so did I—I’m not a quitter Rose Tyler.”

“Not much of a runner either,” Rose muses aloud.

“Funny,” he tells her, sliding his fingers up along her temples. It’s easier to resolve differences when you can feel the emotions of the other person rather then have to guess them.

_Insecurity, frustration, possessiveness, anger and just a touch of…despair?_

Rose blinks open her eyes and stares at him, “why do you feel that way?”

“I think sometimes that you’ll never properly see _me_ ,” he admits, “I am what I am, I can’t change that. You wanted me and here I am…but sometimes I think you want me only in part and not entirely.”

“I struggle with your need for world domination on a daily basis only because you have this annoying habit of targeting the _Earth_ ,” Rose scowls and pulls away, stepping around him as she walks out into the hall, “I don’t want to change you,” she adds, “I want you to stop trying to blow everything up and put that good talent to something useful—like fixing the plumbing upstairs, maybe sort out my hair dryer or even get the tele working again because you’re the one that broke it in the first place.”

“My good talent would be wasted on such mundane things,” he sniffs.

“True,” Rose tells him, “Then let’s do something fun—let’s join Unit.”

“Not a chance,” he makes a face, “I certainly think not.”

“Oh, come on,” Rose whines, “It’ll be _fun_!”

 

 

                                         

* * *

 

 

Fun for _her_ , maybe.

The Master does not like the hero job, and he makes sure she knows that. This isn’t like Torchwood, at unit he’s made to translate alien text and be the guinea pig for anything they aren’t sure about because his body can withstand a lot more than a human. Rose protests some of that---she doesn’t approve of them using him like a lab rat. Other days they get to travel to remote parts of the world and look at odd alien tech that’s crashed—something Rose loves to do.

“Oi, look at this,” Rose calls to him, nodding to the funny looking device kept in a glass case at the back of the ship they currently stood on. It was an old Daeszi transport ship, mostly likely abandoned and left to drift right into the Earth’s atmosphere—yet with one small difference—they’d left something of immense value on board, that much the Master could tell. He had no idea what the odd little stone was in the glass case, it gleamed like fire, like a living thing pulsing from within the stone itself. “What is it?”

“No idea—let’s not touch it, shall we?” he tells her, smacking her hand away from the glass before she could open it. “Sticky ape fingers, _off_.”

“Oh, and your fingers are any cleaner?” Rose makes a face.

“Certainly are,” he tells her, “I actually use a fork when eating.”

“It was a _bagel_ ,” Rose argues.

“With copious amounts of jam—honestly if you wanted that much you should have just sat down with the jar instead.” He’s careful when he lifts the glass container and carries it out to the truck waiting outside. He refuses to let anyone else touch it, sitting with it in the back of the truck across from Rose as they speed back towards base camp.

 

                                         

* * *

 

In the lab, under a microscope the Master examines the stone. “Funny thing,” he says aloud, “it appears to be sentient.”

“Sentient rocks?” Rose quirks a brow, “seriously?”

“Very,” he tells her, “I’ve never seen a thing like it.”

“That’s not something you often say,” Rose replies.

“I know—which is why it’s troublesome. I feel like I should recognize this…it’s familiar and yet it’s not.”

“Then why don’t we---…” Rose doesn’t finish the sentence, in fact everything happens so quickly, she doesn’t even know what’s happened. One minute they’re sitting across from each other at a steel table inside a top-secret unit base, the next he’s lunging across the table, stone in hand as the world around them explodes in a symphony of light and sound.

Then nothing.

 

                                         

* * *

 

When she wakes, the first thing she notices above all other things is how bright everything is—crystal clear even. She can hear the sound of helicopters nearly a mile off. How is she doing that?

How does she know they’re a mile off?

She’s face down, there is debris scattered across her back and everywhere else. Shoving the wood and broken bits of table and lab equipment off of her, she realizes there is a person beneath her.

“Bonehead,” she mutters wearily and freezes at the sound of her voice…which is _his_ voice.

“The stone,” her voice says aloud from beneath her, and Rose stares down at her own face in horror and confusion. “Where’s the stone?”

“In your hand,” Rose tells herself, but she sounds like the Master—which was becoming increasingly alarming every second she knows that.

“Bloody hell...” Rose’s face looks alarmed as she stares up at the man above her, realization dawning.

“I’m a _man_ ,” Rose blurts out.

“I’m a woman—but I’ve been one before so this isn’t really anything new to me—aside from the body switching thing…. can you get off me, your rather heavy,” the Master-Rose says.

“How am I in your body right now?” Rose asks, struggling to keep the alarm from her voice—his voice—and what the _hell_ was that smell? “ _Fuck me_ do I always smell like that?” Rose adds as she makes a face and climbs off of the Master-Rose.

“Yes,” he replies as he struggles to stand, brushing debris off, “constantly—not nearly this bad though…I think you’ve been sweating a bit, you feel a bit damp beneath the arms.” He tests himself out, her body is much less agile, not nearly as strong and her senses are dull and boring.

Fuck now he was _human_.

“How is this happening?” Rose presses worriedly.

“I haven’t the faintest clue but I imagine the stone is involved somehow,” the Master-Rose says and then something occurs to him, something grand and brilliant, “Ha!” he shouts, arms outstretched above his head, “It’s _mine_!”

“Don’t get too excited,” Rose grins knowingly, nodding to the ring on the right finger of the Master-Rose’s hand, “leash, remember?”

“Oh bollocks,” he makes a face.

“That sort of blew up in your face, didn’t it?” Rose grins.

The Master-Rose rolls his eyes and steps around her cautiously, “being human is miserable—do you know I can hardly see a thing right now?”

“I can see perfectly fine,” Rose announces grandly, smugly even. “Apart from having dangly bits between my legs…I kind of like this.”

“Don’t get used to it,” he tells her, “I want my body back, I _refuse_ to be human.”

“Whatcha think sex’ll be like?” Rose asks as they go.

“Only you would think of that right now,” the Master-Rose replies irritably, “Even in my body, you’re as human as ever—and stop walking like that, I look ridiculous. I don’t want them knowing we’ve switched bodies.”

“What’s that noise?” Rose frowns, “sounds like…. drumming?”

“Echoes,” he tells her after a beat, “I told you I can still hear the echoes.”

“Sweet _lord_ ,” Rose murmurs, “to hear _that_ at full power…”

“Mind the stairs,” he cautions, “I’m taller then you—don’t hit your head.”

He’s graceful as he ascends, he doesn’t struggle with her body because he’s been a woman before. He can walk in heels just as good as she can, it seems she’s the only one who needs to adjust right now.

“Why are you walking like that?” he asks after a pause, glancing back down the stairs at her, “stand up straight.”

“You’ve got….” She motions down between her legs. “I told you to wear the briefs damnit.”

“I don’t like underwear, I’ve told you,” he tells her and turns to continue walking, “you’ll get used to it—I know I’m impressive.”

“Oh _please_ ,” Rose rolls her eyes.

“Am I _not_ impressive?” he stops suddenly, turning to look at her with a quirked brow and a challenge in his eyes.

“Plenty impressive,” Rose replies with a blink, “Just never had to walk with it between my legs like this before.”

“Everything is voluntary,” he tells her, satisfied with her response before turning to start up the stairs again, maneuvering through debris, “you’ll find the steering wheel soon enough but remember to keep your shields up and monitor your basic functions.”

“How do I do that then?” Rose asks.

“Oh hell,” the Master-Rose rubs his face tiredly, “you’re going to be a lot of work, aren’t you?”


	11. The Last Dalek Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

The lights are dim and the console crackles like wood popping in a hearth. The Tardis has always been willful but this went beyond anything Oswin has ever seen.  Once when Oswin Oswald had a body, she might have screamed. The abrupt and rough departure frightened her, and even more so because she was a human trapped in a Dalek and unable to pilot the Tardis.

“Stop!” she yells, “what are you _doing_?”

They’ve left both Rose and the Master behind in the twenties.

Now they are hurtling through the vortex—thankfully Oswin no longer has issues with motion sickness or this might be a problem— and Oswin is forced to use the built in anti-gravity system she has to keep level as the Tardis throws herself at velocity through the vortex, across the universe…

Where were they going?

They weren’t running away from something—not the Tardis’s style really—so what were they hurtling towards?

_Bang_

The lights go out and the Tardis is enveloped in darkness, annoyingly the only light is her eyestalk which glows blue in the darkness.

The one time the damn thing is actually _useful_.

The Tardis screams and screeches and jerks to and fro like a sail boat caught in a storm, Oswin clinging with all her might to the grating with every last drop of power she can muster.  Then they stop and it feels as though the gravity has gone from the room.

It feels like nothingness…and then everything all at once as the ship drops like a stone from the sky, hurtling towards the ground—it reminds her of a roller coaster she rode once as a child—and then suddenly jerks forward, the center console suddenly glowing brilliantly, the Tardis urging towards some unknown destination.

Then she stops, and Oswin can feel the landing, tentatively releasing the anti-gravity to make for the door. “Oi…. open the door, will you?” she calls aloud—she could open it but trying to maneuver the latch with a toilet plunger for a hand is ridiculously difficult.

_Boom_

The explosion rocks the Tardis like a hurricane and Oswin is suddenly anxious. It sounds like a war outside, the sound of laser blasts and a woman yelling a name.

_Rory!_

Rory—that name isn’t familiar at all, but the woman who screams it sounds terrified.

_Rory get back!_

_I won’t leave her!_

_River, River do something—I won’t leave her! Please!_

“Where have you brought me?” Oswin asks tentatively.

The Tardis answers her question by opening the doors, twin wooden doors popping open simultaneously, Oswin blinded by laser blasts and a bizarre gold light in the distance. When her vision clears and she realizes what she’s looking at, every Dalek instinct programmed into her screams she run away.

Behind her, the cloister bell begins to ring.

 

                                       

* * *

 

**A very long time ago…**

_Run you clever boy….and remember me._

 

Oswin Oswald bolts upright in bed, gasping for breath. The same dream, over again for as far back as she can remember. It isn’t always the same as dreams tend to be, but often times very similar. She dreamt she was a Dalek in an Asylum full of Daleks, and there was a man with a bow tie and an incredible chin. Those words, those words she whispers aloud just before an explosion so loud and so bright, just before she dies.

Then she wakes up.

Safe and sound in her room, on the twelfth floor of an apartment complex, with the noise of London outside.  Her Mother is downstairs cooking breakfast, she can hear her humming as she flips pancakes. She pushes her blankets aside and slides out of bed, stretching as she goes. The morning sunlight shines throw the windows of her room, illuminating the miniscule dust particles floating in the air. Oswin always imagined they were living things as a child, but when she got older those imaginings faded with the understanding of what they actually were.

“Oswin!” Her Mother calls from downstairs, “you awake?”

“Yes,” she calls with a smile, steps up to the calendar on her wall with a gleam in her eye.

Today was the day.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Oswin calls, scrambling to change. Her Mother was making her breakfast because today, Oswin Oswald was going in for her first interview with the Star liner company she applied to.

One shower and thirty minutes of make-up and clothes later, she was sitting at the breakfast table with her Mother, eating pancakes while she read the morning paper. “I almost managed it the other night,” Oswin says, “The soufflé.”

“Really?” she grins, “I’m proud—always said my daughter would take on the family business one day.”

Her Mother was a cook—she owned her own restaurant. They lived together alone in a flat in the middle of London. Her Father died when she was sixteen, it had been hard on both of them. “Today’s the day.”

“Yes, it is,” she beams at her, “Excited?”

“Very,” she grins back, “It’s everything I dreamed of.”

“I know,” she smiles wanly, “I just wish your dreams were a little closer to Earth and not so far out… _there_.”

“I’ll be fine Mum,” she reassures her gently, “Really.”

 

                                       

* * *

 

 

She’s twenty minutes early to her interview, and sits patiently out in the lobby with her hands folded neatly in her lap until she’s called in. If she gets the job, she’ll be a flight attendant for one of the biggest Star liner companies on Earth, she’ll get to travel all over and see new planets and meet new people.

It’s all she’s wanted to do since she was a kid.

“Clara Oswald?” A woman in a posh looking dress suit stands in the doorway down the hall, looking expect.

“Oswin,” she corrects her lightly, “It’s Oswin—Good Morning.” She plasters her brightest smile on her face and confidently strides over to meet her _hopefully_ future new boss.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

She did it…she actually did it.

Oswin can scarcely contain the excitement as she packs---she scheduled for her first trip in a month once training was completed. Her Mother made a celebratory dinner for her, and then they went out for ice cream and a movie. Oswin wanted every last second she could with her Mum, she had no idea when she’d see her next.

 

Training is complicated and frustrating, but Oswin makes it through. It takes her a couple of tries to get it down but once she does she’s ready to go. A week before her first trip, she goes shopping with her Mum for new clothes to take with her, and to pick up a uniform that is required for all flight attendants.

“Mum, I’m just gonna run in there and pick up my uniform okay?” She says, pointing to the shop just behind her.

“Alright,” her Mum calls back, “I’ll get us a table for lunch yeah?”

“Sounds good” Oswin says cheerfully and turns, stepping into the shop.

“Afternoon,” Oswin says brightly to the dark ginger headed woman behind the cash register. “Hello…here to pick up my uniform,” Oswin tells her, producing an ID card with her name and work information.

“I see,” the woman blinks at her for a moment, and Oswin finds this odd. She’s rather stiff in her movements, mechanical, uncertain.

“Sorry—is everything alright?” Oswin asks curiously.

“Fine,” the woman smiles but even that seems a bit off. “Everything is fine---just going to get your uniform.” She turns and disappears into the back of the store. Oswin waits patiently, frowns at the sound of arguing and then suddenly another woman appears at the door, wielding her uniform.

“Sorry—good help is _so_ hard to find don’t you think? Dull headed girl _honestly_ ,” the woman rolls her eyes dramatically and steps up to the cash register. “Cash or charge dear?”

“Cash,” Oswin says, staring at the bizarre looking woman. Her dress looked like something from the eighteen hundreds…. honestly, she looked like a demented version of Mary Poppins.

“Moe dear,” she calls aloud, “don’t just stand there—I don’t pay you to stand there you know—get the girl a dress cover.”  The woman’s lilting Scottish accent dips and pitches with different words.  The same ginger haired girl emerges, timid and quite as she hurries past Oswin to get a dress cover, proffering to Oswin neatly.

“Thanks,” Oswin smiles, “Your Moe?”

“Yes,” Moe straightens, blinks at her and then looks at the woman behind her briefly before meeting Oswin’s gaze, “I am Moe.”

Moe was a short, timid thing with a knowing gaze and a light sprinkle of freckles along her nose and cheeks. Her dark cinnamon colored hair was pinned back in a messy bun and she wore a blue colored jumper with dark jeans and boots.

“Oswin,” she smiles charmingly, “Nice to meet you—both of you—thanks so much,” Oswin says as she pays and waves to them both, swinging her dress bag over one shoulder as she goes.  It was hard to ignore the way Moe was scrutinizing her like one would scrutinize a bug under microscope. The woman behind the counter makes a face at Moe, a stern _stop-staring-right-now_ sort of look that sends Moe scurrying back into the back room again.

_Absolutely ridiculous species…_

“Oh, ignore her dear,” the woman behind the register tells Oswin as Moe’s voice carries through the walls—probably unbeknownst her— “She’s a bit mad.”

 “I see…” Oswin says tentatively and steps towards the door, “well…it was lovely meeting you both,” Oswin tells her with a charmingly smile before disappearing out the door.

Weird lot they were.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

“Good Morning,” Oswin’s voice is bright and cheerful over the ship’s intercom, “My name is Oswin Oswald and I will be your flight attendant for this trip. Today we are currently setting out for the Galasras galaxy, a planet located just three hundred clicks from here. It’ll be roughly a twelve hour flight so we’ve got plenty of entertainment set up for you…” Oswin drones on, a practiced speech she’s gone over many times in the last month or so.

The flight is exhausting but Oswin enjoys it, she looks forward to this new adventure. When she’s on break she takes a nap, curling up in the attendant quarters.

An hour later, there is a horrible screeching noise and the ship rocks violently, throwing her out of bed. Oswin is groggy and half-awake but scrambles for her seat, strapping herself in as quickly as she can manage. She knows what’s happening—the ship was crashing. She doesn’t have time to ask the why or the how, she simply acts in need for survival. The ship crashes with a loud bang, the lights go out and she hears no sound from the main area of the ship. She unbuckles and struggles through debris for a flash light and her overcoat. She has no idea if the ship even has oxygen on the other side of the door, so she brings along a breather as well. It’s dark when the door swings open, and luckily there is air. Buttoning her coat, she climbs over debris and luggage, checking passengers as she goes.

Some dead, some alive…some unconscious.

“Just stay calm,” she reassures them, meets up with another attendant who carries emergency equipment to aid the others.

“I’m gonna check on the pilot,” Oswin says, and makes her way towards the haul doors.

They won’t open.

It takes her four tries to pry them open herself and immediately she wishes she hadn’t. Snow, heaps of it comes pouring in and she realizes in that moment, the ship’s been severed in two. With the help of another attendant they push the door closed and seal it shut.

“Another way out then,” Oswin says, and starts for the roof hatch at the far end of the ship.  It gratefully pops open easily and she is greeted with fresh air. Several others follow, setting up a distress signal.

Days go by and people begin to act strange.

Finally, when they start to die and come back again, Oswin has sealed herself away inside a side corridor. They bang and scrap on the door without end, and she weeps quietly at the sound, because she knows it’s happening to her too, that odd feeling, the frustration and the memory loss and she can’t understand why she can’t remember her Mum’s name…or what her name is?

What _is_ her name?

She finds a floor hatch and yanks it open, beneath the ship she realizes there is an enormous tunnel. Curiously, bravely perhaps she tosses a ladder down and climbs down the ladder and out of the ship. It was better than staying in that ship to die, better than weeping in the corner and waiting for whatever horrible virus it is that killed her friends to kill her too.

“Breath Oswin,” she chants to herself, “Just breath…you’re okay…you’re fine…it’s just a big dark tunnel beneath a crashed star liner…nothing too terrible.”

That wasn’t helping at all.

Nor were the eerie sounds beneath her.

When she reaches the bottom, her flashlight keeps flickering on and off, the batteries were dying. “Oh _lovely_ ,” Oswin scowls at it.

She freezes upon hearing a screeching sound off to her left, like wheels on old sheets of metal, like…like…

 _No_.

When Oswin was a child, she saw a Dalek. Just one, an old broken thing burnt up from entering the atmosphere. It’d come right out of the sky and crashed right smack in the middle of London. People whisper stories about how it got there, but she doesn’t believe any of them. Now here is another, alive and moving and fully armed.

She hides.

She hides in a cupboard of some sort for what feels like ages, until she struggles to stay awake and her heart is racing. Her memories are being corrupted one by one, and eventually she passes out. 

The next parts are a blur, vague memories of conversion, frightening nightmares and bizarre dreams. When she comes too, she’s safe inside the ship, and that’s odd because she doesn’t remember going back to the ship.

There’s something flashing on the main monitor.

Two people, a man and a woman—Oh thank goodness, a rescue team!

“Hello!” Oswin calls cheerfully over the intercom, “Have you come to rescue me?”

 

                                         

* * *

 

 

**Far into the Future…**

 

_Bang!_

 

Oswin blinks, sitting up gingerly in the dimness of what appeared to be a ship---like nothing she’s ever seen before.

How did she get here?

She remembers being on the ship…but nothing else. The ship had been crashing, and yet for some reason she was now on an entirely different ship. She gets to her feet, wincing at the pain it causes. She’s bruised and sore and her hands press heavily against the smooth paneling of the console before her. At its center is a round cylindrical device that whirls and spins and hums—clearly the ship was moving, but where were they going?

“Hello?” she calls, stepping around the console and across the grating, peering down long empty corridors and up stairwells.

Nothing.

“Anybody?” she calls again, “Hello?”

Still no answer.

“Right,” Oswin says aloud, “What the _hell_ is going on?”

She explores.

The ship is endless, vast and room after room is filled with entirely new and different things. There is an Olympic size pool, a garden, a gymnasium, a theater, a kitchen, more bedrooms then she can count on both hands, an armory, a dungeon, a library—a very big library at that.

But no people.

_Bang!_

Without warning the ship lurches sharply to the right and Oswin is thrown to the floor. Scrambling to her feet again—she was absolutely sick of crashing ships at this point—she runs for the console room, or at least the way she thinks it is. She’s been wandering for so long in here she isn’t sure which way is which anymore.

She finds it on her fourth try.

The console is alit with flashing alarms and crackling wires. She clings to it with everything she has and struggles not to toss up her lunch with the sharp way the ship whips and flips and spins. Then it feels like it is falling, and her stomach is in her throat and she screams because it’s frightening---then they land and it isn’t a very gentle one. Oswin is thrown to the ground again, and she lies on her back, willing herself to breath in and out as steadily as she can.

“Why…does this keep happening to me?” she asks aloud to no one in particular. Once she’s on her feet she stumbles towards the wooden double doors before her. “Let’s see where this goes shall we?” Maybe it’s another planet or a new world, maybe they were in some distant part of the galaxy?

It was… _London_?

“Seriously?” Oswin says aloud, disbelieving. After all that, she’s back in London—then again she supposes it might be nice to….wait a minute….this wasn’t London…or it was but so very….primitive.

London in the twenty-first century, she read about it in school.

“Time Machine,” Oswin murmurs, turning to look back at the blue box behind her, “It’s a time machine.”

“Oi! You!” a man shouts from across the way, sprinting towards her with a woman in tow, “Don’t close that door!”

 

 

 


	12. The Last Dalek Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any of it or make any money from any of it, all of it belongs to those who created Doctor Who.

It takes her only a few seconds to decide, and promptly slams the Tardis door in the man’s face just as he approaches.

“Oi, hold on!” the man shouts from the other side, “Were good guys, this is our Tardis!”

“We’re _good guys_?” the woman echoes skeptically, “seriously? That’s the best you’ve got? We’re _good guys_.”

“I’d like to see you try and do better,” the man hisses back irritably.

“Pardon,” the woman calls aloud, “but this is my Tardis, why are you in it?”

“I don’t know,” Oswin calls back, “I woke up here—if this is your Tardis, why aren’t _you_ in it...and what’s a _Tardis_?”

“Time and Relative Dimension in---…” the man yelps suddenly and falls silent, there is the sound of quiet bickering then, “It’s a ship—my ship—and I’d love it if you’d let us in…I can explain everything.”

“You have a key,” the woman rolls her eyes.

“I do not—oh…” the man trails off, long pale fingers sliding over the key in his coat pocket, “I knew that.”

“Sure, you did,” the woman tells him as he unlocks the door and Oswin scrambles backwards away from them. The woman takes one look at her and rolls her eyes, tossing her coat on the railing, “ _Finally_ you come back…and when you do, you’ve picked up a _stray_!” she tells the ceiling, Oswin looking on wearily.

“Hello,” the man says politely, leaning around the console to look at her before grimacing, his forehead bumping against an overhead panel, “Ouch!—Sorry…not used to being so tall…new body and all….I’ve never been a man before, it’s odd---…”

“ _Shut up_ ,” the woman tells him in a sing-song voice, “sorry…she’s not used to being a man just yet….especially a man of my superiority,” the woman smiles cheekily at Oswin, “I am the Master….who are you?”

“Oswin Oswald,” she replies evenly, “I just woke up here…erm…are you two from like that planet with the interchanging genders? I’ve never met any of them…the ones who change genders all the time…it’s fine really, I just…I’m a bit confused….”

“Oh,” the man cuts in, “I’m Rose Tyler and she’s the Master, but actually I’m the Master and she’s Rose Tyler…we switched bodies…it’s really weird and complicated but technically this is his body and he’s in mine.”

“Ooook….” Oswin says slowly, looking even more perplexed. “I really…don’t want to know…what I _do_ want is for someone to tell me how I got here and please take me home.”

“Wait,” the man stops suddenly, “ _Oswin_?” He blinks at her once, twice, and then his gaze swings towards the woman in stark confusion and shock, “How the hell…?”

“I don’t know,” the woman says, her eyes riveted on Oswin, “It _should_ be impossible but then again I’ve seen weirder things happen.”

“I’m just gonna go…” Oswin says slowly, easing her way towards the door.

“ _No_!” Both say simultaneously.

“Not reassuring,” Oswin replies nervously.

“Look,” the man says, “Just hang on…ok? We’ll take you home…really…I’ll just erm…” the man turns towards the console, looks it over and then at the woman, “Help?”

The woman rolls her eyes, pushes off the railing where she’d been leaning and easily puts the Tardis into flight with a few buttons and a lever. “ _Honestly_ …what I wouldn’t give for some _competent_ companionship.”

“Oi!” the man scowls at the woman, “I am _competent_!”

“Hardly,” the woman scoffs, “I mean _the Doctor_ …another of my kind…somebody capable of driving so I can sit and have a cuppa once in a while.”

“ _Hello_?” Oswin says pointedly, “still here—Hi—can someone please tell me what’s going on?”

“Taking you home,” the man tells her, “Really…you live….um…”

“Fifty first century,” Oswin supplies.

“Yes,” the man tells her, “and that’s…that’s far away from here but we’ll get there.”

“Time Machine,” Oswin nods, “Thought as much.”

The woman stiffens, turns on heel and quirks a brow, “You _thought_ as much?”

“Yeah,” Oswin says, “I’m assuming this ship is a dimension inside another dimension? And If I’m from the fifty-first century and I wake up inside a multi-dimensional ship in the twenty-first century…” Oswin trails off, letting the woman do the math.

A pause and then, “I hate clever people.”

Then she’s gone, striding down the long corridor towards the kitchen like she was queen of the ship.

The man turns and looks at Oswin, “Tea?”

 

* * *

 

“Your staring…” Oswin says tentatively, palming a hot cup of tea between her hands as she and the man sit at the table. The man is toying idly with a raspberry tart, shifting his gaze between Oswin and the table.

“I’m sorry…” Rose says quietly, “I really am…it’s just weird.”

“What’s weird?” Oswin quirks a brow, “I don’t understand.”

“Can’t say…” the man tells her quietly.

“Mmm… _whipped_ ,” Oswin grins cheekily.

“I am _not_ ,” Rose protests, “she’s just…bossy and organized and isn’t sure what to make of you.”

“What’s wrong with me?” Oswin quirks a brow.

“She can’t figure out how you got here…” the man trails off, “and…what’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was on this Dalek planet…” she tells him, “and then I was here.”

“So huge memory gap,” the man says thoughtfully.

“Yes,” Oswin says with a nod and glances towards the woman as she strides into the room sporting a clean pressed black dress suit with a lovely white silk blouse under the black blazer, a string of pearls around her neck.

“ _What_ are you wearing?” the man blinks at her.

“ _Tasteful_ fashion,” she quirks cheekily with a little grin, “you should try it sometime.”

“Take that off,” he says firmly, “I look ridiculous…you know I can’t stand dress suits.”

She quirks a brow, “Not in public,” the Master replies, “let’s save that for the bedroom.”

“Oh _please_ ,” the man rolls his eyes as the woman fills a cup of tea for herself and heads back out of the kitchen.

“I’m off,” she calls with a wave, “ship needs a good cycle and we’ve got a way to go before we land.”

“So….” Oswin says after a beat, “how’d you two get stuck in each other’s bodies?”

 

                                                     

* * *

 

             

She didn’t like this…not one bit.

Rose hated the idea of losing another friend, but Oswin…what happened? How did Oswin go from being a Dalek to being a human?                             

On the other hand, she was happy for Oswin, because she knew Oswin had longed to be human again. She contemplated this while in the wardrobe room, fresh from a shower and staring at the many dark suits hanging on the rack. She went through several, unable to decide what she liked best. The Master was built different then her, and their tastes were different too. She went with a black Armani suit, red silk lining, pressed dark shirt underneath. She had to admit, he’d looked rather fetching in it. The way is fit his figure, the way the sprinkle of grey in his hair gave an air of maturity and independence.

Very nice indeed.

“I actually like that one,” he comments from the doorway, looking spectacular in the dress suit he choose even if Rose hated to admit it…. she did look good in it.

“You did my make-up?” Rose quirks a brow.

“I did,” the Master replies, “I also picked a particularly lovely….” He trails off, straightening the lapels of the coat Rose wore. “You smell…. lovely,” he says after a beat, “and…. wow….do I always smell this good?”

“Yes,” Rose replies with a little smirk, “why do you think it’s so hard to stop myself from climbing all over you all the time?”

“I had no idea,” The Master replies, “ _well_ …I did…I _am_ pretty amazing, aren’t I?” He grins at Rose but when she doesn’t return it he clears his throat and says, “What to do with our little ape friend….”

“Take her home,” Rose says quietly, “Nothing else for it.”

“She doesn’t exactly want to be here anyways,” the Master replies flipping through the racks behind Rose idly, “you need an overcoat.”

“Couldn’t pick one,” Rose replies, watching the Master search.

“Fifty-first century….we could stop off and look for my favorite freakishly immortal ape if you want, he might even be here…a version of him at least.”

“I’d rather not,” Rose says, “I sort of mucked up Jack’s life enough in the other universe.”

“Then let’s do something else,” he tells her, “let’s…. well…” Rose watches him shift uncomfortably for a beat then, “Maybe we could go to dinner.”

“A date?” Rose quirks a brow, “you want to go on a date with me?”

To her surprise, he giggles….and it’s the weirdest thing ever. He almost looks nervous, shifting uncomfortably. “Blimey….is this what you feel _all_ the time? I’m all tingly and my hair’s all on end and I just want to throw you down and---…”

“Ok stop right there,” Rose cuts him off, “I get the mechanics of it…your randy because your human and yes…humans get like that and we can’t control it…but we do have self-control…. which is what you need to work on.”

“Oh, that’s no fun,” the Master makes a face and then eyes the man before him up and down, “You know, I never realized how sexy I am.”

“Oh please,” Rose rolls her eyes, “and I don’t feel a thing right now…which is odd…not used to that.”

“That’s because you can control your mating instincts…turn them on and off, I can’t at the moment.”

“Right,” Rose replies, “Let’s get Oswin home and we can sort this out later yeah?”

“Oh fine,” the Master makes a face and turns towards the door, “but you’ve _no_ idea what your missing.”

                                                     

* * *

 

They wait as the Tardis lands, the gently rocking sensation slowly coming to a halt. Oswin is impatient to leave, impatient to see her Dad, impatient to be home and safe and put the whole nightmare behind her. Somehow, she got a second chance, somehow, she was saved from that Dalek prison though she doesn’t know how. Oswin was not going to waste this chance, she wasn’t going to miss this opportunity…she would go home and make the best of it…finish school, become a teacher…all of it.

 

“Here we are,” the woman announces, “smelly old _Earth_.”

“Thanks,” Oswin nods to them both, “for the lift I mean…and…well…saving me if that’s what you did.”

“Oswin…” the man says suddenly, steps forward nervously. He almost looks forlorn, sad to see her leave, “Oswin…take care of yourself alright?”

“Yeah,” Oswin smiles reassuringly, see’s the sorrow in the man’s eyes, “I will…you too alright?”

“Yeah,” the man smiles weakly. He follows her to the door, moves to turn the latch.

All too late.

Far too late.

The woman at the console shouts just as Rose turns the latch and opens the door, but it’s too late. “Rose wait, _stop_!” the Master recognized the danger too late, horror in his gaze as the cloister bell begins to ring.

Rose looks back up at it, and then at the blinding white light fill the Tardis from the doorway. Even as everything else fades away, she can still here that bell ringing…ringing…. ringing….

 

                                         

* * *

 

Ringing….

“Rose…”

Ringing….

“Rose wake up,” a voice mumbles sleepily, “shut the alarm off will you?”

“Sorry…” Rose rolls onto her stomach, slaps the alarm on her bedside table and rolls back onto her back, “Morning.”

“Morning,” the man beside her says, leaning in for a kiss before climbing out of bed. He strides so confidently even completely starkers towards the bathroom, Rose admiring his tousled brown hair.

He’s got such a lovely bum.

“Your parent’s anniversary party is tonight,” he calls from the bathroom, “we’ve got to be early.”

“I know,” Rose groans, rubbing her face wearily, “I’ve already bought them a gift.”

“Good to know,” he says, pulling on a pair of sweats before heading downstairs to make coffee. They live in a two-story flat on the posh side of London, the sound of traffic outside is a lulling sound. Rose slides out of bed barefoot and heads for the bathroom before joining her husband downstairs.

“So…” Rose says as she sits at the kitchen table, wearing only one of his suit shirts. She at the Doctor have been married for a year now, even after the bickering and fighting, even after he ran off he came back…and now…now they were sorting it out. It was good to have him back, to see his face and hear his voice…. she loved him dearly.

Well…. she could technically call him Valeyard…. but he didn’t care either way. He wasn’t like the Doctor…but he wasn’t like any man she’d ever met either. He was brilliant and funny and ruthless…. sometimes rude, sometimes cold and cynical…. he was an enigma.

“So I’m off to conquer the universe and you’re off to work…we’ll meet up tonight say, seven thirty?” he asks, checking his watch.

“Sounds good,” Rose smiles at him and then frowns, “Your not going to….you know….”

“Oh no,” he waves her off, “that was a rubbish idea anyways…no…I’ll leave Earth be.”

“Mmmm…my hero,” Rose grins at him as she sips her tea, “I don’t get why though….all this…conquering?”

“Order,” he sniffs, stirring his tea, “this universe needs order…and discipline…there’s far to much chaos happening and since nobody ever bothers to listen to me, I’ll just show them instead.”

“You can’t force people to listen you know,” Rose tells him softly, “They have free will.”

“Not for long they won’t,” the Valeyard says as he finishes his tea and sets the cup in the sink, “I’m off….see you tonight.”

“See you…” Rose watches him go with a little frown, smiling only when he turns to look at her.

She loved him so much….so much it made her heart ache to think of him, and yet this….whatever he was doing….it was wrong.

Something was wrong…

But what was it?

 

                                                       

* * *

 

“Morning,” Rose says cheerfully as she steps into the Torchwood office and heads for her desk. When Pete retired, she took over as Director.

“Hey,” Tosh grins at her, “Welcome back…you two have a good vacation?”

“Oh yeah,” Rose grins at her.

“And?” Tosh grins at her expectantly.

“Still no baby,” Rose smiles wanly, “We’re still trying though…he’s thinking it’s got something to do with his biology and mine.”

“It happens,” Tosh reassures her, “you’ll figure it out.”

“I hope so,” Rose stares at her desk, then pulls out as stack of paperwork and gets to work. As director, she doesn’t go out on field work very often, she spends most her time writing on the computer or setting up the scheduling. She divides the tasks, hires and appoints new positions. As of now, Owen took over her old job and Tosh moved up to headquarters with Rose as her assistant. “You got those files for me?”

“Yes,” Tosh calls back from her own desk, “On your desk.”

“Oh!” Rose says as she spots them, “Found them, thanks!”

Why did this feel wrong? It was another day at the office, another boring day doing paperwork and going out to lunch…coming home to listen to the Valeryard prattle on about his ideas…some were actually very good and some were just…weird.

“Rose,” Tosh says, “Got a call from Coal Hill…. seems Tony’s been suspended again.”

“Oh lovely,” Rose scowls as she stands, “I’d better go get him.”

Tony was mostly her responsibility as of late, what with her parents busy with the party planning. She agreed to pick up from school and take him to practice whenever was needed. She did not however agree to listen to her Mother go on and on about when she was going to have grandchildren.

She hadn’t the heart to tell her Mum the truth.

That more then likely, Rose would never have children.

The Valeyard thinks it was temporal radiation from travelling in the Tardis that caused her to be barren. That and a combination of incompatible biology.

Figures.

 

                                                                     

* * *

 

“Again, really?” Rose’s severe expression humbles Tony who’s sitting sullenly on the bench outside the Principals office.

“He started it,” he scowls at his sister, “He pushed me!”

“So, you tell a teacher, you don’t punch him in the face Tony,” Rose sighs heavily.

“Exactly,” another voice chimes in, “Good Morning, I’m Tony’s teacher…Clara Oswald, nice to meet you.”

“Hello,” Rose smiles politely at the dark-haired woman, “I’m so sorry about all this.”

“It’s alright…if it helps, the other boy was suspended too. I actually saw the whole thing…. we really don’t tolerate fighting here thus why both had to be suspended.” Clara stares at Rose for a moment and she could have sworn there was something else in her eyes, something like recognition or even concern.

“Something wrong?” Rose frowns at her.

“Oh no,” Clara smiles politely, “Nothing at all…you just looked terribly familiar…. have we met before?”

“Not that I know of,” Rose tells her.

“You’re sure?” Clara presses, “you know…never mind, I’ve got a class to teach…Tony I’ll see you Monday.”

“Yes Ms. Oswald,” he rolls his eyes and looks away.

They don’t see the way Clara stares after them as they go.

 

                                     

* * *

 

 

She’s sitting in the garden, staring at the Tardis.

It’s odd, it feels odd….it looks odd…. something’s wrong.

Why can’t she shake that feeling?

It was really annoying.

The battered old blue box was fussy lately, probably cross with the Valeyard for something. The Valeyard was still inside changing, the party going on in the background behind her. He was late sometimes, late for parties, sometimes he missed them completely. He was so keen to reorder the universe to his liking that he often forgot about everything else. He wasn’t a bad guy of course, he was good to her. He just had so many big dreams, so many ideas….and some of the ideas were tedious.

“Ready?” he says as he steps out of the Tardis, makes a face when it snaps shut on his coat sleeve. It takes him five minutes to get free and he looks ready to kick the blue box for all the effort it took.

“Why is she so angry with you?” Rose asks him with a frown, “what’d you do?”

“I don’t know,” he tells her, “she’s just being cranky—come on let’s go to the party.”

 

                                       

* * *

 

 

The party is pleasant, they drink and dance and make toasts. They smile together and have their picture taken. He looks dashing in his black tux and she looks lovely in the little black cocktail dress, her long blond hair pinned at one side, swept over her other shoulder in a mass of curls and waves.

She drinks too much, the chardonnay is dry on her tongue and it warms her blood and makes her light headed. She watches him, her husband as he talks with Pete and smiles so kindly. Nobody knows the real him, nobody but her. Everyone thinks he’s the Doctor, everyone looks up to him. He knows what the Doctor knows, talks the same way, acts the same way, but his mind works differently.

Nobody knew that but her.

What would they think if they knew who he really was? What he’s really been doing? If they knew he was a conqueror of worlds, slowly building an empire from scratch to squash out any resistance and finally bring peace to the universe as he calls it.

She calls it slavery…the theft of free will.

She tries to be understanding, but sometimes she just wants to scream at him. When she married him she married the Doctor, not the Valeyard but she ended up with both. This man was a stranger to her sometimes, like right now. Even when he looked at her, in those deep brown eyes she can see the alien lurking beneath, an ancient being staring at her from across the room.

She goes outside.

It’s colder out here, so she goes into the Tardis and finds the kitchen, pulls out some of the better Inoresini brandy. It’s sweet like rum but has the kick of a scotch. It helps her forget things, makes her mind drift. She wanders the Tardis, room after room and looks like a ghost haunting the halls of the past.

This wasn’t the same Tardis.

She finds a door she doesn’t recognize, hadn’t realized where the Tardis was leading her. It opens easily and the room is dark until she fumbles for the lights. “What is all this?” she says aloud, making a face. She picks through gizmos and gadgets, broken tools and odd-looking contraptions. She had no idea the Valeyard was such an inventor. She finds a long gold and silver looking tool, a screwdriver she supposed and fiddles with it, yelping when she hits a button and a jet of light bursts from the tip, blasting a hole in the far wall.

The Tardis is not pleased.

“I’m so sorry!” she shouts up at the ceiling, “I didn’t mean too!” She is so shocked by the action she drops the screwdriver instantly. “You think he’ll notice?” Rose asks timidly after a beat, noting the gapping hole in the wall.

She searches further, finds shelves and shelves of journals and video tapes. She reads a few, blinking at the writing. “I don’t remember writing any of this….” She sips her brandy, keeps reading. She can’t exactly read anymore so she sets the book aside and picks a random tape.

She finds a TV and pops it in, watches for a few moments with utter confusion.

 _My name is Rose Tyler…. it’s….…we’re still lost out here…console still in pieces….Oi,_ Oswin _! I’m filming!_

What was that?

Was that a _Dalek_?

 

_The Master and I….still not talking, I think it might be because I drew on his face in sharpie…._

The woman trails off for a minute and then continues, _I thought it would wash off…really…and after he turned my hair pink….So the summary of my life….Mum is Jackie Tyler, Dad is Pete Tyler, we live on Earth, we are….um….oh that’s right, fifty-six years old…we travel with a man called the Master….blond bloke, you can’t miss him. Nice ass….really…really…_ she trails off in thought and then… _he’s annoying and rude but the things he can do with his tongue are just…._

Click.

Rose pauses the screen, staring at herself on the TV. Who was the Master? What was this?

“You found it,” the Valeyard says quietly in the background, “I wondered when you would….to bad you won’t remember this….I’m going to have to move it again…you always seem to find it…Tardis won’t let me get rid of it. Every time I destroy all this she keeps putting it back…really annoying.”

“How many times have I found this?” Rose frowns at him worriedly.

“Four times now…” he casually walks towards her, hands in his pockets, “Rose I’m so close…just be patient. I know you hate this….somewhere deep down under all that alternate timeline….you hate this…I know you do. Let me finish this and you and I will be rulers of a _paradise_.”

Call the Doctor.

Call him right now.

The real one, the one in the other universe who’d tear the walls between worlds down to get back here and save her. It was risky but Rose was willing to try if she could find a way to escape the Valeyard.

He’s gone completely barmy.

He’s been erasing her memories, making her forget when she finds all this…which means everything she knows is a lie and he must have done something to the timelines.

“Yes,” he says, easily picking the thoughts from her mind, “and in this timeline you and I are still together….I’ve saved you Rose…you’ve know idea.”

“Get away from me,” Rose blurts out as she stumbles away from him, snatching up the screwdriver from the table.

“He’s dead Rose,” the Valeyard says, “I wiped him right out of the timeline…and now I’m going to fix everything he’s ruined.”

She fires….she misses…he’s faster than he looks.

“I’d really hate to have to regenerate…I like this body, isn’t it nice?...the sex is great isn’t it? All that stamina….males of my species have a lot more stamina then yours do….two hearts….two lungs…were a lot stronger too.” He moves so quickly she doesn’t even see him do it until the screwdriver is knocked from her hand and on the floor.

“Sorry,” he tells her, and it’s the last thing she remembers before his hands touch her temples.

 

                                                     

* * *

 

She wakes up in bed, her head is throbbing.

“Blimey…” she moans aloud.

“Hangover,” the Valeyard says, wielding a glass of water and some aspirin. He sets it on her bedside table and with it a bit of dry toast. “Drink lots of fluids, take the aspirin and get some sleep…I’ll be home later—Oh and can you make lasagna for dinner? I really like Lasagna.”

“How’d we get home?” Rose frowns in confusion.

“You passed out on your Mum’s bed last night so I carried you to the car and took you home,” he explains easily.

“Work…” Rose groans aloud.

“I called them already,” he smiles faintly, “and it’s Saturday.”

“Oh,” she blushes sheepishly and rolls onto her side, “going back to sleep now.”

“You do that,” he kisses her temple before he leaves.

 

 

 

* * *

 

                                                         

 

              She wakes to the late afternoon traffic and the sound of the post being delivered downstairs, the little metal slot squeaking noisily as the mail is shoved through. She gets up and pads downstairs, bare except for her knickers and thin tank top. She sees no point in putting on clothes at the moment as she’s alone in her apartment.

Junk mail…bills….a phone?

She blinks at it, staring at the sleek black smartphone in her hand, why was there a phone in the post?

It starts ringing and scares her so badly she almost throws it.

 _The Doctor_.

Why was the Doctor calling her? _How_ could he be calling her?

She answers it after two rings.

“Hello?” a man says in a Scottish burr, “who is this? I’ve been calling this number for ages trying to figure it out and nobody’s been answering—is this a prank? Jim is that you? If it is I’m going to---…”

“Doctor?” Rose breaths softly, “How are you calling me?”

“Rose?” His voice is filled with shock and quiet horror. “This is impossible…you can’t be calling me.”

 “I was wondering the same thing…somebody put this phone in my post and here I am,” Rose tells him, “It’s probably a good thing…. he’s gone barmy…the one you left me here with…. calls himself the Valeyard and—…” the line goes dead.

“No!” Rose all but shouts at the smartphone in her hand, scrambling to dial and re-dial but it never connects.

She does that for hours, calling and calling and calling.

She finds a charger for it and plugs it in, stares at it relentlessly, willing him to call her back.

Then suddenly the phone chimes and there is a text message.

_Rose if you get this… Wait for me._

“Who’s that?” the Valeyard’s voice fills the room.

Rose looks up at him from her place on the living room couch and shrugs, “Just a friend. She wanted to go out for drinks but I think I’ve had quiet enough of that.”

“Yeah,” he grins and rolls up his sleeves, “Seeing as there’s no lasagna…I’ll make dinner.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rose frowns, “I totally forgot.”

“It’s fine,” he waves her off with a smile, “chicken parmesan sound good?”

“Oh yes please,” Rose grins at him and watches him go.

She watches him go and he never sees how wearily she looks at him. The Doctor mentioned an alternate time line…. how did that happen? If so, what was the previous time line like? Who changed it?

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

She waits for him.

The Doctor said he would come, and so he will. How he planned on entering an alternate timeline was beyond her, but he said he would come. She plans and plots, watching the Valeyard cautiously. Time Lords were hard to fool, they were skilled at sensing deception, especially him.

So she plays nice with him.

 She makes life seem ordinary, she is the perfect wife, and the same old Rose Tyler he knows. She can’t risk him discovering her deception because he might try and find a way to stop the Doctor from getting here.

The next problem however…who sent the phone?

Her question is answered one morning when she’s out for a jog and realizes she’s being followed. Not just by anyone, but by Tony’s teacher. Clara Oswald was jogging too, but she followed the same path, unaware Rose knew. She was trained by Torchwood to identify this sort of thing, she knew when she was being followed.

“What do you want?” Rose all but shouts at Clara, stopping suddenly, “Why are you following me?”

“Did you call him?” Clara presses earnestly, “I found that phone in the Tardis…was hiding in it when the Valeyard changed everything.”

“How do you know about the Tardis?” Rose asks wearily.

“I remember…. nobody else seems to remember but I do,” Clara tells her pointedly, “Your Rose Tyler…. your Bad Wolf…I saw the videos…the journals…the memory orb…. I know what I am now.”

“I really don’t know what you’re on about,” Rose tells her.

“He’s been erasing your memory, hasn’t he?” Clara says to her, “you can’t remember because he keeps making you forget.”

“I called him,” Rose says after a beat, “and you’d best stay away from me when he gets here. I don’t know you…I don’t know how you know all these things but--…”

“Go to the Tardis, find the room…Tardis will show you…and then you’ll believe me.”

Rose watches her go and then turns back towards her house...she needed to find this room.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

She finds the room.

It takes her a bit, but the Tardis leads her there eventually. Inside she finds journals and videos, odd contraptions, old clothes and jewelry and assortment of odds and ends in big metal old fashioned trunks. She pockets the gold and silver screwdriver when she finds it, she figures she might need it. The memory orb proves to be the most useful, and in it she sees decades of time in its depths, days she’s lost and memories stolen from her.

That man…the Master…who was he to her?  Her other self, the one in all the journals and videos talks about him like he’s a friend but the further into the books and videos she went, the more he began to seem like a lover.

Or an arch nemesis.

Or both.

She is angry.

Angrier then she’s ever been, so angry she wants to shove the Valeyard out the Tardis doors and into a supernova. He’s robbed her of her memories, her time line, everything she’s ever known and re-written her life to suit his needs. Where was the Master in all this? What happened to him?

She finds his overcoat in one of the boxes, inhales the scent of him still lingering on the wool. He smells like…time and all manner of things. Just holding his coat told her stories of the lives he lived.

She looks him up in the console room, spends hours poring over whatever she could find on him. Apparently, he wasn’t a very nice man according to the data base. He did terrible, awful things to the Doctor and to his companions.

Why would she be his friend?

“Rose?” his voice calls from outside, the sound of a key in the lock.

Rose quickly clears everything on the monitor and throws herself down onto the captain’s seat just before he opens the door, a smile plastered to her face. “Do you remember when we first met?” she blurts out—why was she asking him that? “The Autons? Your big ears…” she laughs a little as he steps in, tossing his coat over the railing being circling around to look at her, “I really miss that old daft face.”

“What’s brought this on?” he asks curiously fiddling with the monitor, “I need to take off soon…unless you’re coming with me this time?” he asks curiously, quirking a brow. “I’d love it if you would…you don’t have to…but…it’d be fun.”

“ _No_ ,” Rose smiles, “Nah I’ve got loads of paperwork here…you go off and…do whatever it is you do out there all day.”

“Your acting weird,” he makes a face, “why are you acting weird?”

“I’m not acting weird,” she blinks at him, “Just…being nostalgic I guess.”

“I’ve got the leather coat back there somewhere,” he says after a beat as she starts for the door, “if you’re thinking about---…”

“No,” Rose blushes brightly, “I wasn’t thinking _that_.”

“It’d be fun…I’ve all the time we need…time machine,” he says as he motions to the ship around them, “we could go off and find a room and I could get the jacket and---…”

“No,” Rose laughs, “No…it’s fine…. I’m gonna go and make tea.”

He watches her go in confusion, never seeing the awkward and uncomfortable look on her face as she goes.

 

                                         

* * *

 

 

“What’s…bad wolf?” Rose says over breakfast one morning in a little shop down by the wharf. Clara is with her, eating a bagel.

Clara debates for a moment before answering, “I don’t really know…it’s like…before all of this….my name was _Oswin_. Oswin’s my middle name and apparently, I always used it. Honestly I think the only reason I remember is because he wasn’t anticipating me.”

“My journals said it’s always in me….do you think?” Rose trails off, staring at her hands, “do you think I could use it?”

“No ring,” Clara says with a nod towards her hand, “he never existed here to make you one.”

“Yes, but if he was never here then I should have never become bad wolf to begin with,” Rose reasons aloud.

“Yet you still are,” Clara adds, “you must be…because according to all that stuff in the Tardis, bad wolf can’t be removed from you so easily. It’s too powerful to be altered by some barmy Time Lord.”

“So,” Rose tells her, “we need to find the Master…we need to find out what happened to him.”

“Only the Valeyard would know that,” Clara points out, “and if he knows that you know, he’ll wipe your memory again.”

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

They assemble a small army from Torchwood, Rose at the lead. It took a lot of convincing for anyone to believe her, and quietly there was guilt in her heart for all of this. She understood what he’s stolen from her….but he was husband.

“He’s not your husband Rose,” Tosh argues while they all sit around a large table, mapping out a plan. “You married the Doctor….you can’t help it if he wasn’t who he pretended to be.”  


“What’s the motive anyways?” Owen cuts in thoughtfully, “why do all this? What’s his end game?”

“Control of Bad Wolf…” Rose says, “maybe just me….I dunno….it seemed like the Master and I were a thing and I can’t imagine him taking that lightly.”

“In this other world,” Tosh ponders aloud, “you were divorced…he left and never came back...it’s what you wrote in those journals.”

“First things first,” Owen says after a beat, “we cut off his main source of power—the Tardis. We hide it. Then we catch him….we’ve got those sleeping pods in the back….put him into stasis.”

“Ship him back to Gallifrey,” Rose muses aloud with a knowing smile.

Gallifrey was back…that was another surprise.

The Doctor doesn’t know yet clearly, so it was a secret she’d have to keep to herself for the time being.

“We’ve got a plan,” Owen grins with a slap of his hands, rubbing them together gleefully.

“Does anybody know the coordinates for Gallifrey?” Tosh asks after a long pause, all turning to look at her with equally blank stares.

“Guess that’ll be my job then,” Tosh surmises with a nod.

“Doesn’t resolve the timeline issue,” Rose says, “How do we reset the time line?”

“If we reset the timeline, we can skip everything else,” Tosh tells them, “we just need to find the exact moment in time where he altered history.”

_I wiped him from history…._

Rose blinks, the memory flashing through her mind, racing away from her grasp as quickly as it had appeared. He’d said that to her at some point, though she couldn’t remember when. “The Master’s dead…” Rose says after a beat, “we need to find the point where he died and change it.”

                                                       

* * *

 

They find it.

Rose uses the Tardis to do it, waits for the Valeyard to be away in the house before she does. She knows how to get around him by now, he’s too trusting of her these days. He thinks she’s just a pretty little human doll to be put on a shelf, he has no understanding of the steel beneath her skin. Come to think of it, the Doctor thought that way of her too. Not nearly so much as the Valeyard does, but the Doctor never let her think for herself, always taking her choices away, always believing he knew best.

There it was.

The point they needed, the break in the timeline where it fractures off into an alternate one. “He’s on Gallifrey,” Rose says, staring at the screen, “I’ve got to go to Gallifrey.”

“You think they’ll just let you in?” Owen quirks a brow as he glances at the screen, “Just….fly right in there will they?”

“If I’m in the Tardis they will,” Rose surmises, looking up at the console, “she’ll help me fly…..she wants this fixed as much as I do.”

“Rose,” Owen says worriedly.

“Let her go Owen,” Tosh says softly, taking his hand, “this is our best chance.”

“I’m coming,” Clara’s voice calls from outside, Owen turning to open the door and let her in, “Tardis texted me.”

“The Tardis…. _texted_ you?” Rose blinks at her.

“Yeah,” Clara beams, “weird, right?”

“Weird…” Rose watches her circle the console thoughtfully, “this doesn’t bother you…. knowing you’re a Dalek and someone made you human again?”

“I don’t remember it,” she shrugs, “why should it bother me?”

“We should go,” Rose watches Clara thoughtfully, wondering but silent.

“Yeah,” Owen nods, “you two be careful.”

 

                                                         

* * *

 

Flying the Tardis was harder than it looked.

Rose didn’t remember how, though apparently, she’d been taught. So they rely on the Tardis to help, and it didn’t make it any easier. They were either running into things or overshooting entry into the vortex entirely.

Rose thinks the Tardis might be a bit annoyed with them right now.

“This isn’t working!” Clara shouts over the noise of the angry console, the flashing lights, the grinding sounds.

“Parking brake!” Rose beams with memory, reaching over to release it, “I forgot the parking brake!”

“How long till he notices we’ve stolen it?” Clara calls.

“Not long now,” Rose replies, “Not a damn thing he can do to stop me however.”

“Unless he has another Tardis,” Clara’s face has gone pale, her eyes on the screen above them.

“Oh no…” Rose blinks at the screen.

“Can this thing go any faster?” Clara asks, panicked.

“No idea—let’s find out,” Rose tells her, grabbing levers and switches.

This was completely mad….they were either going to blow themselves up or actually make it to Gallifrey in one piece---honestly she was hoping for the latter of the two options.

_Rose what do you think you’re doing? Do you honestly think you can save him? He ruined you….I’m not just saving you, I’m saving the universe…you have no idea what you become!_

His voice is an angry screech over the intercom, so Rose switches it off….and her cell phone starts ringing.

“Stop calling me!” she shouts aloud, tossing the phone away from her.

Then the Tardis phone rings.

Then Clara’s phone.

All of them ringing all at once, and she knew he was probably using his Tardis to do it.

Before Rose can do anything, the Tardis takes that decision away from her and they are both thrown to the floor, the Tardis taking off with a burst of speed, careening into the vortex and back out again, hurtling towards Gallifrey like a shooting star across the sky.

“Were going to crash!” Clara shouts fearfully.

“No kidding!” Rose yells back, scrambling to slow the ship down.

_Bang!_

They hit the ground hard and the Tardis spins and rolls. Clara and Rose are thrown down again, and all is silent when the ship finally comes to a halt.

“Think they noticed us?” Clara’s weary voice murmurs from across the console room.

“Probably—we should run,” Rose says, gingerly getting to her feet.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

Run they did.

Running and running and running, sailing across red grass and beneath silver leafed trees, Rose hardly having the time to take it all in. This place, the Doctor was always going on and on about it. It’s more beautiful then he said it was….it was magnificent.

“Getting close!” Clara shouts, slams to a halt just as the Valeyard rounds a corner.

“Crossing my own timeline right now,” he tells them both, “Messy business this. You two…you’ve been very naughty,” he clicks his tongue disapprovingly, “Rose Tyler…you’ve made a mess of my Tardis. It’s time to go home now.”

“Not happening,” Rose steps back, careful to stay out of reach.

Clara shifts her gaze between them, takes a deep breath…she knows what to do. There was only ever one way out of this….the Valeyard wouldn’t let them save him…but he was the key to fixing everything. She never explained all that she knew now, never told them everything she remembered. She knows who she is now.

She is the last Dalek….and it was time to end this.

Faster than Rose could see it, before she could move to stop her, the Valeyard was falling….back and back and back, farther away, Clara wielding that gold and silver screwdriver like a sword, like it was a part of her hand. It must have fallen out of her pocket during the crash and Clara found it. Rose gaps at her, frozen to the spot, unable to speak or move. Save Clara….save the Master….her two dearest friends….and she has to choose one of them.

“Run!” Clara shouts at her, looking back…she knows this is the end for her. She smiles lovingly at Rose one last time before she adds, “Remember me.”

Rose runs.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

She can still save her…. she can still save them both. If she resets time, Clara never dies. She was buying her valuable time to reach the Master. Behind her, the brunette falls…. the Valeyard never played fair. Rose rounds a corner, spots the younger version of the Valeyard and who she could only guess was the Master. He was leaving—the Master that is—and the Valeyard was just behind him, some kind of laser in hand. Rose had no weapon, no means to defend herself…. but there was quite a lot of debris around. This must be the tail end of the war, Gallifrey still rebuilding itself.

So true to fashion, Rose Tyler hits the Valeyard over the back of the head with an old piece of timber.

The Master stares at her and stares, his gaze shifting between her and the piece of timber, the man sprawled unconscious on the ground.

“He was going to kill you,” Rose blurts out by way of explanation, “I get…a little carried away…sometimes.”

“I know the feeling….” The Master says in response, watching her like she was some kind of frightened wild animal liable to pounce on him too if he moves to quickly. “I’ll be off then.”

“You do that,” Rose tells him.

Then everything changes.

 

                                                       

* * *

 

 

It was like watching her life in rewind, flashing images flying past behind her eyes at high speed. When it stops, she’s lying on the console floor of the Tardis, with a terrible headache. “What happened?”

It was fading away…. everything that happened…fading away like a dream.

“Somebody meddled with my time line,” the Master’s irritated voice grumbles from the other side of the console where he’s sprawled on the floor.

“Ow…” Clara sits up, holding the side of her head, “I don’t…. how did we…. where am I?”

“Tardis,” Rose winces as she sits up, “what do you remember?”

“Nothing…. just…. I feel like I fell asleep—did I fall asleep? Seriously did I actually just drop off mid-sentence or something?”

“Like I said,” the Master stands, rubbing his back, “somebody meddled with time.”

“The Valeyard,” Rose says suddenly, “I remember….he killed you…created an alternate timeline.”

“Remind me to repay the favor,” the Master tells her wryly and then glances at Clara, “Ape….let’s take you home.”

 

                                                     

* * *

 

“She’s not an ape…her name is Clara,” Rose tells him as they both watch her walk away from the Tardis and up towards her flat where she lives with her Dad.

“You’ll miss you little pet, won’t you?” he asks, “I could always find you another Dalek.”

“No,” Rose smiles faintly, sadly, “She doesn’t even remember us…this is for the best I think.”

Then she kisses him, one hand at the back of his neck, the other over his right heart. He isn’t expecting it, this sudden and passionate kiss. Rose pours every ounce of herself into it, because he was dead and she’d forgotten him…. but she remembers him now, and the horror of him dying was even worse then she could imagine.

Because she couldn’t imagine it…. being without him now.

He doesn’t have any chance of escape, her fingers curling into the lapels of his coat, shoving him backwards into the Tardis. He doesn’t care for soft and gentle, never has. He also doesn’t like being controlled but Rose isn’t giving him an inch right now. Instead she shoves him down onto the captain’s seat and shows him exactly how much she missed him.

 

                                       

* * *

 

 

They lay in the dark, nude and curled up against each other. Rose’s head is on his chest, listening to the twin heart beats. The sheets of her bed are twisted around them haphazardly, and Rose is soothed by the hum of the Tardis and sound of his breathing. She loves him, so very much. She doesn’t have the nerve to tell him, but she loves him. She thinks telling him might scare him, he isn’t exactly the _I love you_ type. His hand is on her bare back, his skin was much cooler then hers.

“Do you mind if I kill him?” the Master asks suddenly, breaking the silence.

“I don’t know…” Rose says quietly, “I hate him…but….he’s still…”

“He’s _not_ the Doctor Rose,” the Master says quietly, “Not even close.”

“I know,” Rose replies.

“Just thought I’d give you a heads up,” he shrugs.

“Now if only we could get _all_ the villains to give us a heads up whenever they planned world domination.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he replies dryly.

“So….back in our respective bodies,” Rose muses.

“time reset itself…reset button just puts everything back to default…” he explains, “easy.”

“Still…let’s keep that rock locked up yeah?”

“Definitely.”

 

                                                                   

* * *

 

For the first time in a long time…they go home.

With a few stops in between of course.

Rose is happy to see her Mum’s house, the garden…her old room. Everything feels old though, like this was just a distant memory and she was revisiting the good old days. Rose is old, older then this house, older then her Mum or Pete. She and the Master were probably the oldest living things on this planet. By now Rose was over four hundred years old, free to wander the universe with her time lord lover. When she meets him outside, he’s looking up at the stars.

“You can’t tell them you know,” he says quietly.

“I know,” Rose replies softly.

He takes her hand, and she knows this gesture is difficult for him because of what it means. He shares the stress of the day, his fears, his thoughts. Rose returns it, careful to shield him from her deeper feelings because she doubted he could handle it.

“I miss my friend…” she says quietly, sadly.

He scoffs, “Oswin wasn’t a friend Rose— _I’m_ your friend,” he points out, “Oswin’s just a _pet_.”

“Mmm…love how possessive you are about your friends,” she muses dryly.

“Get used to it—you and the Doctor are stuck with me…mind you, nobody kills him but me, got that? _Me_ —not you.”

“Not planning on killing him,” Rose makes a face before looking away.

“Good idea,” he nods, “I’d be cross.”

“Mum wants us inside,” she sighs heavily, “dinner.”

“If I have to endure _another_ lecture from her…” he trails off.

“Better not tell her about us switching bodies then,” she laughs, “she’s already cross about the navigation panel.”

“I’ll be in soon,” he tells her, nodding towards the house, “going to lock down the Tardis and then I’ll join you…and do try to remember—we can’t tell her _anything_. She’d never understand Rose.”

“I know,” Rose smiles reassuringly and turns, going into the house.

 

                                                     

* * *

 

She sits with her family, smiles and laughs and fills her plate. She tells them stories of her adventures, but never the secret things, never that which she and the Master agreed should be kept between them. Her Mum can’t know that she and the Master were lovers—definitely not that. There were so many secrets…how did her life become nothing but secrets? Was the Doctor like this? Always hiding things, always having to lie about everything?

It was frustrating.

“So…. how’d you two make it back then?” Pete asks curiously. They’d landed an hour after they’d left…. nobody even realized they were gone.

“We got it fixed eventually,” Rose shrugs, “it’s been such a long day…”

“When’s he coming in then?” Jackie asks curiously, “His food will get cold.”

“Let me check on him,” Rose stands, setting her napkin down on the table before going outside into the garden.  “Oi!” Rose calls as she walks to where the Tardis was parked, “Hurry up will you? Mum’s getting anxious…you’ve been out here for….” She trails off, what she sees makes her heart drop into her stomach.

The Tardis was gone.

 


End file.
